A paralinguistic approach to consecutive interpreting in academic context

Abstract

The article represents a theoretical-practical approach to paralinguistics from the perspective of an empirical study that encompasses a corpus of seven speeches interpreted by twenty students from the Department of Translation, Interpretation and Applied Linguistics, Moldova State University. A contrastive analysis on English to Romanian translation directionality was conducted in order to assess the paralinguistic quality of the target-speeches. From the theoretical viewpoint the paper reinforces the ideas and opinions reflected in the seminal works produced by D. Crystal, F. Poyatos, B. Tissi, G. Trager on paralinguistics, combined with praxeological approaches of the research conducted by G. Ilg, S. Lambert, B. Moser-Mercer, D. Gile, S. Kalina, A. Gillies, R. Setton and A. Dawrant. The aims of this study are: (1) to determine types and sources of paralinguistic features with the purpose of raising awareness in would-be interpreters about the undesired effects of such features on the quality of the target-speech when overused in the process of interpreting; (2) to propose didactic activities that should be conducive to the development of students’ rhetorical and public-speaking skills. It was determined that the highest rates of paralinguistic features were for alternants and filled pauses while the lowest rates were represented by silent pauses, primary qualities and differentiators. When a high occurrence of such paralinguistic features is observed in interpreting, the phenomenon can be addressed through practical exercises intended to diminish or elude their destructive manifestation in the target-speech.