Turn-taking Strategies In Liaison Interpreting

This report,based on the author's liaison interpreting practice on 27^th,June,2017,describes the turn-taking challenges the author met during the interpreting task and her coping strategies.The ideal turn-taking principle in interpreting is primary interlocutors A,B and interpreter C take turns to speak and turns go regularly from A to C to B to C and then to A.However,in the author's interpreting practice,there were many irregular turns,such as overlapping turns with many speakers uttering speech at the same time,small-talks among several Chinese speakers,bilingual Chinese speakers'direct dialogues with the American speaker and turns that have been interrupted by other situations,which present the author great challenges in turn-taking.In this report,the author describes the whole interpreting process,including pre-task preparation and on-site performance.Based on relevant research,the author discusses the turns and turn-taking mechanism in liaison interpreting and analyses the different coping strategies the author takes in interpreting task,including interrupting a turn,ignoring a turn,creating a turn and returning a turn,with reference to the relevant turn-taking mechanism and the effect of the coping strategies in the on-site communication.After post-task reflection,the author concludes that in various irregular turn-taking situations,interpreter should use different coping strategies to facilitate communication between or among speakers.It is effective and proper to interrupt overlapping turns,ignore small-talks about previous turns and bilingual Chinese speakers'direct communication with English speaker,create a turn to remind speakers of the previous turns that have been interrupted and return a turn to make ambiguous information more specific.