An empirical study of pauses in Chinese-English simultaneous interpreting

Abstract

This empirical study explores the characteristics of and motivations for pauses in Chinese-English (C-E) simultaneous interpreting (SI). The data were collected from a simultaneous interpreting task in which five expert interpreters and five trainee interpreters interpreted an authentic speech from Chinese into English. A bilingual corpus was built comprising transcripts of the speech and the interpretations and pauses were codified for analysis. Retrospective interviews were conducted to stimulate subjects' recall of their motivations for unnatural pauses in SI production. The major findings are: First, pauses are less frequent but longer in C-E simultaneous interpreting than in the original speech. Second, there is a hierarchical distribution of pauses corresponding to syntactic complexity, except that pauses inside phrases are disproportionately frequent. Third, major motivations for unnatural pauses in C-E simultaneous interpreting can be attributed to SI-specific strategies such as waiting, formulating and restructuring. Fourth, compared with trainees, expert interpreters have fewer and shorter pauses and their pauses tend to be more appropriate and occur mainly at major syntactic junctions. Although both groups share major motivations for unnatural pauses, expert interpreters have remarkably fewer pauses due to formulating, waiting, conceptualising and split attention but more pauses due to monitoring and adoption of strategies.

Keywords:

• Chinese-English simultaneous interpreting
• pauses
• characteristics and motivations
• empirical study

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge support from the LTG Project (No. LTG12-15/SS/CBS1) of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Special thanks also go to the editors and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.

Notes on contributors

Dr Binhua Wang is currently Research Assistant Professor of interpreting and translation studies in the Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Previously he worked as associate professor and head of the Department of Interpreting at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. His research interest lies in various aspects of interpreting studies. He has authored a monograph entitled A Descriptive Study of Norms in Interpreting, co-edited a collection (Interpreting in China: New Trends and Challenges) and co-translated the book of Introducing Interpreting Studies. He has published widely on CSSCI journals and on SSCI/A&HCI journals such as Meta and Interpreting. He is also a veteran conference interpreter.

Tao Li is an MA graduate in interpreting studies from the School of Interpreting & Translation Studies at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies.

Notes

1. Although the present article is the result of joint efforts, Tao Li collected and analysed the data and wrote the initial draft and Binhua Wang can be identified as the corresponding author who conceptualised and designed the whole research and has revised the draft substantially and rewritten it thoroughly.