Exploring Self-Repairs In Sight Translation

As a representative of disfluency phenomenon,Self-repairs are common in first language(L1)and second language(L2).It is also one of the key factors influencing the interpreting quality.Over recent years,directionality in interpreting has attracted closed attention from academia.Directionality in this thesis refers to interpreting from English into Chinese and interpreting from Chinese into English.However,most studies on directionality have mainly focused on consecutive interpreting and simultaneous interpreting,leaving much room for sight translation.Based on the previous research on self-repairs conducted by Levelt,Petite,the study proposes an experiment hypothesis: Directionality has an impact on self-repairs in sight translation.Majoring in interpreting,six postgraduate students from the School of Foreign Studies of Nanchang University were involved in the experiment.By analyzing their transcripts of recording data and relying on retrospective interviews,the thesis aims to answer the following questions:1.What are the characteristics of self-repairs in sight translation?2.How directionality affects self-repairs in sight translation?3.How to reduce the frequency of self-repairs so as to improve the fluency of sight translation?The results reveal that self-repairs in E-C direction outnumbers that in C-E direction.In terms of the classification of self-repairs,Repetition Repairs(Within-word Interruptions Repairs and After-word Repetition Repairs)accounts for the largest proportion of both E-C and C-E sight translation but the count of Repetition Repairs in C-E is higher than that in E-C.As to Appropriate Repairs and Failed Repairs,the proportion in E-C outstrips that in C-E.Additionally,the frequency of Error Repairs and Different Information Repairs in E-C is higher than that in C-E.In E-C direction,comprehension difficulties caused by vocabulary and sentence patterns is a prominent factor affecting self-repairs in sight translation.While in C-E direction,self-monitor of lexical,phonetic,and grammatical errors greatly influences self-repairs in sight translation.On the basis of the taxonomy of self-repairs proposed by Levelt and Petite,the author establishes a tentative taxonomy for the current research to enrich studies on sight translation and broaden the taxonomy of self-repairs.Considering the major findings above,the paper puts forward three pieces of pedagogical advice for sight translation training:1.Avoid Repetition Repairs as much as possible by reducing the use of editing words;2.Enhance bilingual language proficiency,especially second language proficiency.3.Conduct more skills-oriented practice for sight translation.As for the implication of the present research,it enriches the existing studies of sight translation process by exploring self-repairs in two-way sight translation from the perspective of directionality,which can also shed light on sight translation training and the advancement of student interpreter’s sight translation competence.