Improper Pauses In German To Chinese Consecutive Interpreting And The Coping Strategies

Speech is occasionally interrupted by pauses of various length.They are essential parts of human speech.Properly used,pauses can serve many functions such as breathing,marking syntactic boundaries and can also be used for rhetorical effect.However,improper pauses can also cause interruptions in the transmission of information,making the listener feel uncomfortable and can be perceived as disfluencies.Especially in the process of interpreting,the interpreter plays a vital role in communicating between two parties who don’t speak the same language,who tend to set high expectations for speech fluency and regard improper pauses as a sign of unprofessionalism.This study takes the pause phenomenon in the consecutive interpretation for the mock conference of Novel Ways of Unmanned Driving as an example.Based on previous research,this study classifies pauses into proper and improper pauses,examines the improper ones,summarizes the causes of improper pauses and seeks to find strategies to improve them.This study observes the causes of improper pauses from the aspect of listening,note-taking and production.Further analysis shows that low effectiveness of listening and analysis,note-taking and also language production are the main causes of the improper pauses in this case,which affect the fluency of the interpreting and the overall interpreting performance.On this basis,this study summarizes the causes of improper pauses and proposes strategies to solve each of these problems,including balanced allocation of energy resources,active listening,efficient use of symbols and logic structures of note-taking,understanding syntactic structure,and building good speaking habits.It is hoped that these strategies can help cope with the problem of improper pauses and improve the overall quality in interpreting.