| Clear, fluent and timely delivery of the target language is one of the most important criteria to measure the quality of simultaneous interpretation(SI). The study of pauses in SI serves as a breakthrough to effectively promote one’s interpreting ability. Pauses mostly stay with specific types in SI like non-grammatical pause, audible hesitation, unfilled pause and repeat. Listening and understanding, incompetence expression and applied strategy may easily cause long and delayed pauses in EnglishChinese simultaneous interpretation. Moreover, interpreter’s poor knowledge, better choice of certain words and overloaded source language lead to audible hesitation and unfilled pauses in listening and understanding; repeated error correction for a better target version and interpreter’s anxiety lead to audible hesitation and total silence in language diction; varied rules between English and Chinese lead to unfilled pauses in SI for waiting strategy is used frequently. The fluency of SI can be enhanced by certain approaches. Being fully prepared before task, getting main ideas while task and improving listening ability after task can be practiced as ways to lower the pauses caused in listening; balancing the rate of language flow and refining one’s state of mind can be practiced to lower the pauses caused in language diction; freely switching the SI strategies from one another can be practiced to well handle the pauses caused by waiting strategy. |
