An Empirical Study Of Pauses In English-chinese And Chinese-english Consecutive Interpreting

This thesis presents an empirical study of the features of pauses in bi-directional consecutive interpreting between English and Chinese.The study,through four consecutive interpreting tasks and stimulated recall interviews,aims to address the following research questions: i)What is the frequency of pauses occurred in consecutive interpreting production both in E-C interpreting or C-E interpreting? ii)Where do the pauses tend to occur in consecutive interpreting? iii)What are the contributing factors of pauses in consecutive interpreting?Are they the same in E-C and C-E consecutive interpreting?This study invites 15 postgraduate students from Shanghai International Studies University,enrolled in the program of English Linguistics and Literature,to participate in the consecutive interpreting tasks.All participants are also invited to take stimulated recall interviews after the interpreting tasks to probe into what causes the pauses.With the recording of interpreting tasks and interviews transcribed faithfully,the author also employs the software Cool Edit pro 2.1 to analyze the pauses.The pauses are examined from the perspectives of frequency,distribution and the contributing factors.The analysis reveals a high frequency in both E-C and C-E consecutive interpreting.Pauses tend to occur in long and complex sentences in E-C consecutive interpreting,while more pauses occur at the beginning of a sentence or a sense-group in C-E consecutive interpreting.In addition,pauses may well occur when there are proper nouns or expressions with Chinese characteristics and figures in the source speech.Silent pauses and filled pauses also co-occur in both E-C and C-E consecutive interpreting.Factors in relation to interpreting information and reproduction contribute to the more pauses in E-C consecutive interpreting,while pauses in C-E consecutive interpreting are largely the results of factors related to reproduction.Other factors,the employment of interpreting strategies,incoordination of efforts and psychological factors,are insignificant to lead to pauses in both E-C and C-E consecutive interpreting.Pauses are clearly defined in the study.The employment of stimulated recall protocol provides convincing evidence when probing into the contributing factors.By comparing the patterns of pauses in bi-directional consecutive interpreting,this also helps to promote the development of studies on interpreting directionality.With the analysis and discussions on pauses,this study sheds some light on the consecutive interpreting training of postgraduates.