An Analysis Of Pauses In Consecutive Interpreting

There is no single standard when it comes to the evaluation of interpreters’ performance. However, there is a consensus on some quality criteria which are more or less:completeness of message, accuracy of special terms and fluency. Since fluency is an important criterion of interpreting practice, disfluency undoubtedly decreases overall quality of target language production. Pause is a most common type of disfluency. For my personal practice on a mocking conference, pauses indeed influence the quality of my practice. To listeners, pause at wrong segment or just a long silence, can not only give rise to difficulties in comprehension of the original text, but also adds to the questions on accuracy and credibility of the interpreters’performance. The report takes on a case-study model and tries to briefly analyze pauses we run into, the reasons why they occur and how to avoid them.Daniel Gile’s effort model for consecutive interpreting is introduced as a theoretical framework for the report. Effort model is a basic framework accounting for how CI works. According to Gile, CI is divided into two phase:comprehension and speech production. Based on this, pauses in my own practice are classified as two types. Typical examples of pauses influencing interpreting quality in my case and detailed reasons why pauses occur are illustrated. Then a set of referential solutions are listed that I hope will be helpful for trainees in the field of interpreting.