A STUDY INTO DIFFICULTIES TO MAINTAIN FLUENCY ENCOUNTERED BY ULIS STUDENTS CLASS 14E20 AND 14E13 IN THEIR END-OF-TERM VIETNAMESE- ENGLISH SIMULTANEOUS INTERPRETATION =

Abstract

ABSTRACT Fluency is one of the criteria whereby the performance of a simultaneous interpreter is judged. Surveys show it is also a quality that language-service users expect from an interpreter. That is to say, skill to maintain fluency should be imparted to fledging interpreters in any interpretation courses. Hence, such factors motivate a study into disfluency of student-interpreters, to be more specific, what disfluency is, how disfluency is manifested, what the most dominant types of disfluency is and most importantly what the causes for disfluency are and if disfluency is a problem for students. To this end, 20 interpreting students from class 14E20 and 14E13 were chosen as the subject for this research. Recordings from their end-of-term simultaneous interpreting test were obtained and mined for disfluency. Error analysis was adopted as one of the underlying research method, and the classification of disfluency was taken from Tissi (2000). The result shows maintaining fluency is not at all a difficulty for students with the highest percentage of disfluency is only 13%. In addition, filled pause and restructuring are the most dominant manifestations of disfluency. Also, the research has worked to discover causes of disfluency from 3 aspects of input audio, failure of the interpreters themselves and external factors via interviewing with 18 out of 20 subjects.