Waiting-A Necessary Tactic In Chinese-English Simultaneous Interpretation

Simultaneous interpretation is highly efficient in that it does not interrupt the continuous speech of a speaker and makes it easier for audience to follow the whole target-language rendition. Therefore, simultaneous interpretation has been increasingly embraced in conference. However, learning or practicing simultaneous interpretation is not a crash course, rather, it involves a gradual process. A qualified interpreter must be able to manage necessary tactics and techniques which may include chopping, waiting, conversion, omission, summarization, prediction, addition and supplementation, etc. The paper is dedicated to analyzing simultaneous interpretation from theoretical and empirical perspectives. As a tactic of simultaneous interpretation, waiting is viewed quite differently from one interpreter to another. Some believe that waiting is necessary and effective because with more information comes in during the waiting; simultaneous interpreter would get a clearer logic and thus can deliver more fluent target-language rendition. This group prefers to start interpretation when intertwined logic is understood. While others hold that since simultaneous interpreters have to do multiple tasks in a blink including decision-making, e.g. when to start interpret and when to pause. So they say waiting would bring burden to interpreter, which will lead to mismanagement of effort and poor quality output.The author found that proper use of waiting tactic is good for interpreting target language information to the largest possible extent. The author analyzed the impact of waiting in simultaneous interpretation on the output based on theories, comments related to waiting and Daniel Gile's Effort Model. The author then pinpointed where and why the waiting tactic is applied in the experiment and analyzed if the application is indeed necessary.