A Study On Student Interpreters' Dysfluencies In En-CH Simultaneous Interpretation

Accuracy has been seen by many as a prioritized standard when assessing the quality of interpreting.The standard of fluency,though it has been frequently discussed in interpreting activities,has never been studied systematically in academic research.This thesis gives an overview of previous research in dysfluency phenomena and presents a categorical study on the topic.A simulative experiment is taken with ten student interpreters as objectives and a designed survey is conducted to analyze the distribution,triggers and solutions of student interpreters' dysfluencies.This study finds that dysfluency phenomena fall into three categories,i.e.pause,self-repair and lapsus linguae.Self-repair can be further divided into three,i,e.appropriateness self-repair,repetitive information self-repair and error self-repair;lapsus linguae include reduction,addition,advance/delay of initials,advance/delay of vowels,substitution,etc.The experiments show that in English-Chinese simultaneous interpreting,the most frequent dysfluency is self-repair,followed by pause and lapsus linguae.There is a correlation between speed of interpreters' speech and the frequency of self-repair and lapsus linguae;lapsus linguae reveals whether or not interpreters are monitoring themselves.Problem triggers include:inadequate language proficiency of the student interpreters,difficulty in effort distribution,overload of information,insufficient background knowledge,etc.Countermeasures are adjusting EVS of interpreters,slowing downing speed of speech,better preparation and improving interpreters' competence by practicing more.