Pause Frequency Characteristics of Professional Interpreter’s English-Chinese Simultaneous Interpreting and Their Cognitive Processes: A Case Study Based on a Small-sized Corpus with Dual Modalities
Abstract：Abstract: A deep understanding of pause, one of the most common paralinguistic features in interpreting, is of great significance for both interpreting practice and teaching. This paper studied pause frequency characteristics of professional interpreter’s English to Chinese simultaneous interpreting and their cognitive processes. The VOA live EC simultaneous interpreting of Donald Trump’s presidential inaugural speech was selected as the Case, based on which a small-size bilingual parallel corpus with dual modalities was built. A comparison of pause frequency and its chi-squared test were made through SPSS between original speech and the EC simultaneous interpretation. Results showed that the pause frequency in simultaneous interpretation was bigger than that in original speech. A further analysis found five operation modes as follows causing pause frequency increase in Chinese simultaneous interpretation: 1) loosening of compact structures; 2) segmentation of long information units; 3) production of interpretation in batches; 4) co-occurrence with paralinguistic features; 5) explicitation of logical connectors. The researcher analyzed the cognitive processes behind those operation modes on the basis of Relevance Theory, through which the rationality of pause frequency characteristics shown in the Case were explained.
Key Words: EC simultaneous interpreting; pause frequency; professional interpreter; interpreting cognition
