Study On Silent Pauses In Consecutive Interpretation

With the prosperity of its development and the enhancement of comprehensive national strength, China’s international status has been improving continually. And the communications with other countries are widely conducted. Under this circumstance, China’s interpreting market is undergoing rapid development while interpreters, as a crucial role in interpreting, are borne with greater responsibility. Nowadays, the most frequently utilized ways of interpreting are simultaneous interpreting and consecutive interpreting. And for its advantage in accuracy and convenience, consecutive interpreting is widely used in political negotiation and business conference and even sometimes in academic exchanges and receptions. Too many pauses in consecutive interpreting will largely affect the language fluency and information integrity and furthermore, influence interpreters’ performance.With an interpreting experiment as the supplementary study, this thesis is aiming to find out reasons for silent pauses in consecutive interpretation and to explore the improving strategies for learners. Four second-year postgraduate students majoring in interpreting took part in this empirical study, interpreting one English passage into Chinese and one Chinese passage into English. The record of their interpreting, the interview data and notes are collected. After carefully analyzing the data, the major findings are:in CI, interpreters’ pauses are caused by numerous factors such as unclear notes, seeking for appropriate expression, formulation, self-repair etc. Then the author will combine the auxiliary experimental results with her own experience, and concludes improving methods for minimizing pause phenomenon, by which the enhancement of relevant skills can be stressed in CI training.