An Analysis Of Pause Causation In Simultaneous Interpreting Process

This study is designed to explore simultaneous interpreting (SI) difficulties fortrainees through the examination of their explanations for their pauses andhesitations in the SI process. To understand the differences of SI difficulties in theopposite interpreting directions, a Chinese to English (C-E) and an English toChinese (E-C) interpreting tests were conducted among14interpreting graduatestudents, followed by a retrospective interview to find out what caused their pausesin the simultaneous interpreting. The subjects’ strategic reactions to their difficultiesin each direction were also observed and compared. The findings showed that in C-Ethe major difficulties for trainees were the language causation in English production,whereas in E-C, they were mostly troubled by information processing difficulties incomprehending English text. In viewing their strategic application, the subjectsshowed greater flexibility and text manipulation in C-E, while more constrained byword identification and semantic representation and confined to producing only whatthey got from the source text in E-C. However, in the E-C, some subjects were ableto draw inferences based on the topic and take a good guess aligned with the speechdirection.The thesis is divided into five chapters. In the first chapter, research motivationand background of the study are introduced. The second chapter is literature reviewabout pause and fluency in SI progress. The third chapter elaborates the details of theexperiment, including the participants, materials, procedure and results. In the fourthchapter, contrast the pause causation in both C-E and E-C based on the examplesfrom the experimental cases and strategic solution. The last chapter is conclusion andresearch limitations of the test.