Filled Pauses In Consecutive Interpreting

International communication is becoming ever more frequent with the deepening of globalization in which interpreting plays a very important role.Much research has been carried out in the past decades against this background.Filled pauses,as a very common feature in interpreting,are always a focus for researchers.Many studies in this area involve the definition and position of filled pauses,with some giving solutions to this problem.Nonetheless,there are still questions to be further answered: What are the features of filled pauses? What are the main causes for filled pauses?Analyzing filled pauses,this thesis aims at finding the main causes for filled pauses in consecutive interpreting and how different types of causes are connected with filled pauses.For this purpose,the author invited 20 MTI students to do an experiment.The analyses were made after data collection and simulated recall with the subjects,which could be seen as a justification for the hypothesis that filled pauses in consecutive interpreting are mainly caused by a lack of language proficiency.The theoretical foundation for this thesis is Daniel Gile's Effort Model,which views interpreting as a process of mental operations.Any problem in interpreting can be attributed to insufficient or unbalanced processing ability.Therefore,the Model is elaborated on in this thesis,offering explanation for the correlation between the pauses and their causing factors and why language capabilities are the main cause for filled pauses.The significance of the research lies in its finding that it is language skills,instead of content processing,that matters more for filled pauses in consecutive interpreting.