抄録
In this paper, we focus on the pauses that partly characterize the utterances of simultaneous
interpreters, and attempt to analyze the results of experiments conducted using human subjects on
the relationship between listener impressions and the length of pause. In speech, a pause is an
essential element for producing the rhythmic aspect of spoken language, and this rhythmic aspect is
closely related to a person’s listening skill and understanding of the semantic contents of speech.
However, since simultaneous interpreters make pauses in order to wait for the speaker’s next input
before starting their interpretation, interpreters’ utterances give us a different impression from
conventional utterances and those pauses ought to influence a listener’s impressions. In this paper,
we investigate the characteristics of listener-friendly simultaneous interpretation. We conducted
experiments to clarify this influence by using 31 subjects and two different types of
English-Japanese simultaneous interpretation data, these being free-utterance lectures without a
prepared script (A-style lectures), and lectures based on prepared scripts (B-style lectures). We
selected 12 A-style lectures and 9 B-style lectures from the CIAIR Simultaneous Interpretation
Database. The results reveal that in A-style lectures where the speed of speeches was relatively low,
it was ascertained that the lengths of pauses appearing in interpreters’ utterances were short in
cases which the subjects evaluated as listener-friendly interpretation. In B-style lectures where the
speed of speeches was high, it was ascertained that the length of interpreters’ pauses has little
influence on the subjects’ listener impressions. Moreover, we found a common feature in both
lecture styles: the listener impressions were based on the stability of the speech-pause period and
the presence of rhythm.
https://ror.org/04chrp450 
