A Corpus-based Study On The Variables Affecting EVS Of E-C Simultaneous Interpreting At The Conference On Disarmament

Ear-voice span（EVS）is a distinct feature of simultaneous interpreting,which plays a pivotal role in SI process and interpreter’s performance.Previous studies on EVS have mainly adopted an experimental approach.But researchers failed to reach an agreement on the average EVS length and touch upon variables affecting EVS.After nearly 30 years of research and application,corpus-based translation study has become a heated topic in translation studies and a corpus has become a powerful tool for descriptive translation studies.Therefore,based on the self-built EnglishChinese Parallel Corpus of CD,this research aims to measure EVS through a corpusbased approach and address relations between EVS and its variables（delivery rate of speakers,delivery rate of interpreters,interpreter’s gender,average word length,standard type-token ratio,lexical density,average sentence length of SL）under the theoretical framework of Daniel Gile’s Effort Model.The study finds that the average length of EVS of professional interpreters at the Conference on Disarmament is 2.728 seconds,which is in line with most findings of 2-4 seconds in the literature.The correlation analysis of EVS and its variables indicates that there is no significant correlation between STTR and EVS;female interpreters have longer EVS than male interpreters;the delivery rate of speakers and interpreters,AWL and lexical density have negative influence on EVS while ASL has positive impact on EVS.The research also discusses the reasons for the influences and coping strategies of professional interpreters,providing practical and pedagogical significance to student interpreters.