Disfluencies In English-Chinese Interpretation Based On PACCEL

This study examines corpus-driven research regarding the disfluencies in English-Chinese(E-C)interpretation.Language fluency is considered an important criterion for a successful interpretation output assessment,however,disfluency is ubiquitous among interpretation learners.Disfluencies in interpretation have been investigated in previous studies,although little research has been done on the disfluencies among university undergraduate English majors.Also lacking in research is the use of interpretation corpus for exploring disfluency in English-Chinese(E-C)interpretation.This study explores possible taxonomy and what correlations,if any,are present when examining the frequency and distribution of Chinese disfluencies based on TEM8 oral test scores.First,the author proposed a tentative classification suitable for disfluencies in E-C interpretation based on Levelt's disfluency model,Clark&Wasow's three hypotheses and Dai Zhaohui's taxonomy of disfluencies.Disfluencies were largely prevelant among students' interpretation output;of the 100 subjects studied in PACCEL-S,2,776 spontaneous disfluencies were recorded with pauses as the major type of disfluency,followed by repetition and self-repairs.Multiple disfluencies were often observed when students were asked to interpret complex sentence structures imbedded with relatively more information.Frequency of filled pauses were found to be negatively correlated with the overall test scores,while no significant differences were observed between high and low scoring test groups.Based on the aforementioned results,implications for interpretation teaching is given,such as to include fluency in the assessment criteria of interpretation exams and design special tasks to enhance students' self-monitoring capacity and control disfluent output.