Disfluencies In English-Chinese Consecutive Interpreting And Coping Tactics

Fluency is an important criterion when we evaluate the quality of an interpreting.A disfluent speech not only hinders the audience from understanding the content,but also weakens the reliability of the speaker.For an interpreter,the latter case is fatal.Thus,disfluency in interpreting is worth noting and further studying.Theoretical studies on disfluency in interpreting studies are few both at home and abroad,and a major part of them is based on empirical research about Chinese-English consecutive and simultaneous interpretation.What is more,the relevant studies on field interpreting are even rarer.The author,however,on the ground of literature review from home and abroad,discusses disfluency based on the examples from her own English-Chinese field interpreting,aiming to attract attention to forms of disfluent interpreting and potential solutions.With the recording and transcript at her hand,the author analyzes her performance and then finds out the main problem with her interpreting: disfluency.Disfluent output increases the anxiety of the interpreter,inhibits audience from understanding the information and even incurs credit degradation form the speaker.Therefore,the author intends to analyze her disfluencies in her practice and tries to put forward feasible solutions.With all the effort,the author spies out three most frequent disfluencies in her interpreting: improper pauses,repetitions,and self-repairs.With the wish of output improvement,the author comes up with three possible tactics: note-taking enhancement,mental building and deverbalization.After introducing the background of the case and analyzing the performance of the author,she summarizes three common disfluencies and puts forward three coping tactics accordingly.The first disfluency being studied is improper pauses,which are not only often seen in daily communication,but more frequently noticed in interpreting.The second is repetition,which is normally caused by mental stress or insufficient language capacity.The third one is self-repair,which is conducted by an interpreter with the aim to improve his accuracy but usually degrade his performance.Subsequently,the author offers three coping tactics for the reader’s reference.The first comes to note-taking,the foundation for interpretation.The second is deverbalization,the soul of interpreting.The last but not the least,mental-building is advised as the safeguard for a smooth performance.With all the effort,this report is expected to enrich the interpreting studies and facilitate some perspective for trainee interpreters who wish a less disfluent delivery.