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Article published In: FORUM
Vol. 17:1 (2019) ► pp.1–19

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Disfluency in relay and non-relay simultaneous interpreting

An initial exploration

 | Hong Kong Polytechnic University & Qufu Normal University
 | Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Published online: 26 July 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/forum.18016.che
Abstract
This corpus-based study explores the effects of relay interpreting at meetings of the United Nations General Assembly by comparing features of disfluency between the outputs of relay and non-relay simultaneous interpreting (SI). The findings are as follows: (1) the output of relay interpreting is shorter and more dispersive than that of non-relay interpreting; (2) filled pauses are the most common type of disfluency; and (3) the relay SI output shows fewer lexical and phonetic E-repairs and more A-repairs for ambiguity, syntactic E-repairs, and D-repairs than the non-relay output. The results suggest that the use of relay vs. non-relay interpreting may affect interpreters’ output.
Résumé
La recherche, qui repose sur le corpus, mène une étude sur l’effet de l’interprétation en relais dans l’Assemblée générale des Nations Unies en comparant les caractéristiques de disfluence entre l’interprétation simultanée en relais et celle en non-relais. Voici les découvertes: (1) L’output de l’interprétation en relais est plus court et plus décentralisé que celui de l’interprétation en non-relais. (2) La pause sonore est le type le plus commun des disfluences. Et (3) En comparaison de l’output de l’interprétation simultanée en non-relais, il y a moins d’ E-réparations lexicales et phonétiques, et plus d’A-réparations pour les équivoques, plus d’ E-réparations syntatiques et plus de D-réparations dans l’output de l’interprétation en relais. Les résultats montrent que l’ utilisation de l’interprétation en relais peut donner de l’influence à l’output des interprètes.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Research background
    • 2.1Disfluencies as predictors
    • 2.2Disfluency in simultaneous interpreting
    • 2.3Effects of relay interpreting
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Data source
    • 3.2Controlled variables
    • 3.3Annotation
  • 4.Data analysis and discussion
    • 4.1Overview of annotation statistics
    • 4.2Analysis of disfluencies in SI output
      • 4.2.1Overview of disfluency distribution
      • 4.2.2Disfluency in relay and non-relay interpreting
      • 4.2.3Probing into repairs
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
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