Abstract
Listener impressions received from simultaneous interpreter's utterances differ from those received from normal/ordinary speech. In this paper, we investigated the relationship between “fillers” appeared in simultaneous interpreter's utterances and listener impressions on interpreting performance by conducting a number of experiments. The results of these experiments indicated that the more frequently the fillers appeared in the middle position of interpreter’s utterance units, the more unfavorable listeners’ evaluation of overall interpreting performance became. In comparing simultaneous interpreter's utterances with ordinary speech for the purpose of defining the characteristics of the fillers that appeared during simultaneous interpreting, it also became clear that the fillers appeared more frequently in simultaneous interpreter’s utterances than in ordinary speech. These findings suggest that the fillers appeared in the middle position of interpreter’s utterance units must have provided one of the reasons why listener impressions received from simultaneous interpreter's utterances differ from those received from ordinary speech.
