Self-Repairs In Trainee Interpreters’ English-Chinese Sight Translation

Self-repair in interpreting is a common phenomenon,but it is often mixed up with other disfluencies.Even fewer studies are related to self-repairs in sight translation.To dive into the specific field,this thesis will propose a revised taxonomy of self-repairs in sight translation.Based on Levelt’s(1983)and Zeng&Hong’s(2012)taxonomies on self-repairs,the new taxonomy takes into consideration of the specificity of sight translation.The following research questions are proposed:(1)How can Levelt’s taxonomy of self-repairs in L1 and Zeng&Hong’s taxonomy of self-repairs in consecutive interpreting be adjusted to cover self-repairs in English to Chinese sight translation?(2)How much does each category account for all self-repairs?In other words,what is the distribution of each type of self-repair?(3)What are the underlying reasons for such distribution in self-repairs in sight translation?Two categories are added on the basis of Levelt’s and Zeng&Hong’s taxonomies.The first is Procrastination Repairs.The second is the Rechunking Repairs which belong to the sub-category of Error Repairs.Then,based on the theoretical framework,an empirical study is conducted,involving 15 student interpreters asked to do a sight translation task and finish a retrospective interview under close observation.The recording is transcribed and analyzed,from which the following is discovered.Student interpreters do demonstrate certain propensity for certain types of repairs during sight translation:Appropriateness Repairs,dominate among all kinds of repairs,followed by Error Repairs,Procrastination Repairs and Different Repairs.Finally,some suggestions and limitations of this study are presented at the end of the thesis.