Effects Of Directionality On Fluency In Simultaneous Interpreting:Evidence From Chinese-English Student Interpreters

The quality evaluation of simultaneous interpreting is mainly conducted from dimensions of content,language and deliver.Fluency is an important yardstick to measure the delivery.Non-fluencies affect both the completeness and usability of the interpreting.Foreign research on fluency in simultaneous interpreting starts early,producing a larger number of papers from diverse perspectives.In contrast,there is limited research in this field in China.This study compares nine student interpreters’ fluency in different interpreting directions by focusing on such indicators as pauses,repairs,fillers,repetitions,slips of the tongue,and unfinished sentences.With retrospective interviews,this study makes research into the implication of directionality on fluency in interpreting between Chinese and English.This study finds that,in terms of the pause frequency,pauses less than 2 seconds in Chinese into English（hereinafter referred as C-E）interpreting significantly outnumber those in the other direction,while pauses of more than 2 seconds in English into Chinese（hereinafter referred to as E-C）direction are significantly more than the other way round;in terms of the pause duration,on average,pauses before nouns and verbs in the E-C direction are shorter than those in same places in the C-E interpreting;in terms of repairs,there are more adjective repairs in the E-C interpreting,while there are more pronunciation repairs in the C-E direction;in terms of fillers,those in the E-C direction are far more than those in the C-E interpreting;in terms of repetitions,slips of the tongue and unfinished sentences,the directionality does not make a significant difference.The findings above reveals student interpreters’ relatively slower reaction speed of notional words in the C-E interpreting,weak English competency,weak listeners’ awareness,and inflexible language expression.The study suggests that student interpreters enhance English competence,prioritize pre-task interpreting preparation to improve familiarity with terms and accelerate interlingual conversion,increase listener awareness,make expressions more flexible,to improve their interpreting fluency.