Coping Tactics For Turn-taking Difficulties In Liaison Interpreting

People’s daily conversation is a turn-taking activity in nature. Though liaison interpreting is a unique discourse process with the participation of three parties, interlocutor A, B and interpreter C, turn-taking mechanism exists in it as well as in any other conversations. However, for most of the cases, turn-taking in liaison interpreting goes smoothly only after the translation of the interpreter.Under ideal situation, the interpreter C only needs to transfer turns between interlocutor A and interlocutor B directly in liaison interpreting, that is, the turn-taking model in it goes in a regular way as A-C-B-C-A. While in real practice, turn-taking does not go as the ideal model. Instead, there may be conflict, silence, overlapping and nonlinguistic information in turn-taking, which requires the interpreter to show his or her subjectivity consciousness. After research, the author holds the view that the interpreter serves as a participant, a controller and a promoter of the whole process of turn-taking in liaison interpreting.By analyzing about one month’s personal practice and making questionnaire survey on interpreters and clients in liaison interpreting, the author finds out that turn-taking difficulties do exist in liaison interpreting. Whether interpreters can handle turn-taking problems well or not will directly influence their performance on scene and final communication results.Therefore on the basis of case analysis, the thesis has discussed the basic form of turn-taking in liaison interpreting, that is, to accept a turn, to hold a turn, to transfer a turn, to interrupt a turn, to grant a turn, to end a turn and to start a turn, so as to conclude specific coping tactics for turn-taking difficulties such as conflicts, silence, overlapping and nonlinguistic information. The thesis aims to provide references for liaison interpreting practice and teaching and to help interpreting clients better understand interpreters’performance on scene.