Improper Pause And Its Coping Strategies In Arabic-Chinese Simultaneous Interpreting Under The Perspective Of The Effort Model

As a common phenomenon in language,pauses can help speakers adjust their breath,distinguish between clauses,and emphasize key contents.This means pauses play an important role in language production.Pauses are also common in interpreting since it is a kind of language production activities.Whereas,improper pauses usually have a negative effect on language fluency,which is regarded as a key factor concerning the quality of languages.This paper takes the “2020 Sino-Arab Video Conference for Experts” mock conference as an example to discuss the impact of improper pauses on the quality of interpretation.The paper puts improper pauses into three categories,i.e.,improper pauses during the phase of 1)listening and analysis;2)short-term memory,and 3)production in simultaneous interpreting,based on the Effort Model by Daniel Gile.Concerning the linguistic characteristics of both Arabic and Chinese,and referring to previous research,this paper classifies improper pause triggers in the above-mentioned three categories into six factors: i)obstacles in listening and analysis;ii)local cognitive effort;iii)excessive information density;iv)syntactic differences;v)hesitation in selecting lexical items;and vi)self-monitoring and correction.The paper also provides strategies for coping with the aforementioned triggers to reduce or eventually avoid the occurrence of improper pauses.Based on the analysis of the improper pauses in the examples,this paper aims to provide a reference for other learners of Chinese-Arabic simultaneous interpreting,to reduce improper pauses,improve speech fluency,and perform higher-quality interpreting.