Turn-taking Skills In Liaison Interpreting

This report was based on the author's liaison interpreting for the interview conducted by the journalist from ZAKER with Professor Erdal Arikan,Father of 5G Polar Codes,on July 27 th,2019.The ideal turn-taking principle in liaison interpreting is that interlocutor A,interlocutor B and the interpreter C take turns to speak with turns going regularly from A to C to B to C and then to A.However,in the author's interpreting task,there were many turn-taking problems affecting communication between the journalist and Professor Arikan such as silence,awkwardness,overlapping turns,interruptions,etc.This report illustrates how the author adopted five turn-taking skills,namely conveying,creating,ignoring,interrupting and taking turns to solve the abovementioned problems during the interpreting task.In this report,the author first gives an introduction of the interpreting task and later describes the interpreting process including pre-task preparation,on-site interpreting and post-task evaluation.Then based on previous research,the author elaborates on the concepts of liaison interpreting,turns and turn-taking skills,etc.After that,the author employs typical examples to analyze the five turn-taking skills he adopted on the interpreting site.In the last chapter,the author shares his major findings and limitations of this report as well as his suggestions for writing a similar report.After the interpreting practice,the author realized that it is precisely because the interpreter adopts reasonable turn-taking skills to coordinate between or among the interlocutors that the conversation can run in an orderly manner.Hopefully,this report can help student interpreters have a better understanding of the importance of turn-taking skills in liaison interpreting.