Self-repair in consecutive interpreting: similarities and differences between professional interpreters and student interpreters

ABSTRACT

The present study investigates the similarities and differences between professional and student interpreters in their use of self-repairs, in terms of form and motivation, and analyzes the impact of expertise on fluency. To this end, a retrospective interview-based Chinese-to-English consecutive interpreting experiment has been carried out, of which the results are as follows. First, both groups adopt repetition, restart, replacement, rephrasing and delayed repair as repair techniques. Second, repair of errors and appropriateness constitute major motivations for self-repair, and repair for output idiomaticity and repair due to errors in the original speech are also observed, enriching the classification of repair motivations in the C-E consecutive interpreting context. Third, in comparison with the student group, the professional interpreters pay more attention to semantic reproduction and are more proficient in syntactic structure conversion, leading to fewer syntactic error repairs and D-repairs in the professional group. The differences in repair models between the two groups can thus be attributed to their varying capabilities in processing syntactic structures and semantic representations.

KEYWORDS:

• Self-repair
• forms and motivations
• consecutive interpreting
• retrospective interview

Acknowledgement

Special thanks go to Dr. Matthew Reeve for his insightful comments and also his help in polishing the language.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Social Science Foundation of China #1 (Development Model of Chinese-English Simultaneous Interpreting Capacity) [grant number 17BYY068]; Zhejiang Provincial Research Fund for Scholars in Humanities and Social Sciences #2 (Self-monitoring in consecutive interpreting) [grant number 16NDJC179YB]; the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities #3 (Program of Big Data PLUS Language Universals and Cognition, Zhejiang University); and Hangzhou Municipal Research Fund for Scholars in Humanities and Social Sciences #4 (Uncertainty management in consecutive interpreting) [grant number 2016RCZX19].

Notes on contributors

Mingxia Shen

Mingxia Shen, is an associate professor in translation and interpreting studies at School of Foreign Languages, Zhejiang University City College. Her current research focuses on cognitive process in interpreting.

Junying Liang

Junying Liang, is a full professor in psycholinguistics and translation studies at Department of Linguistics, Zhejiang University. She holds a doctorate degree in cognitive psychology, and her current research focuses on psychological approaches to interpreting studies.