An Empirical Study Of Monitoring And Self-repair In Chinese-english Consecutive Interpretation

Speech monitoring and self-repair is an issue that receives wide attention from the fieldof language production. Two of the most important theories are Dell’s Active SpreadingTheory and Levelt’s Module Theory. The difference between the two main theories liesin the way in which the information is processed: the former allows information frombottom to the top, while the later only allows top-to-bottom processing, and differentmodule has its unique input and output which operate independently. Kormos (2006)concluded that there are four stages in language production: conceptualization,formulation, articulation and self-monitoring. Among those four stages,conceptualization and self-monitoring consumes effort, while formulation andarticulation do not.Self-monitoring requires effort. According to Gile’s Effort Model, repairs occur whenthe speaker’s effort is insufficient. Once the error in the speech is detected, the speech isinterrupted immediately. Self-interruption takes place after error detection, butsometimes before a word, a phrase or a sentence is completed. This is the MainInterruption Rule. Levelt believes that re-planning is conducted only after error isdetected and speech is interrupted. Relevant theoretical studies in interpreting areinadequate at home and abroad, while empirical studies are even rare. Therefore, thepresent study is designed to fill the gap.The subjects of the present study come from the audio base of Shanghai AdvancedInterpretation Accreditation Test. It studies the monitoring and self-repair ofconsecutive Chinese-English interpreting by student interpreters or amateurinterpreters. The objective of the study is to exam whether the main interruption rulestill applies to consecutive Chinese-English interpreting and whether planning onlyoccurs after interruption.In order to further explore the mechanism of monitoring and self-repair inChinese-English interpreting, the present study collects the following data for analysis:(1) duration and frequency of self-repairs;(2) numbers of inappropriate wordings anderrors;(3) duration of error-to-cut-off and cut-off-to-repair intervals.The major findings of the present study is (1) there are more covert repairs than overtones;(2) Levelt’s Main Interruption Rule is not observed in interpretation;(3) themonitor is more sensitive to errors than inappropriate wordings;(4) re-planning occurs before interruption.