Use of explicitation by interpreting students and its contribution to consecutive interpreting performance: A developmental perspective

The present study aimed to explore the interpreting strategy of explicitation and its connection with interpreting performance from a longitudinal approach. We identified and compared eight specific means of explicitation employed by 62 interpreting students in a B-to-A (English-to-Chinese) consecutive interpreting (henceforth CI) task between two training stages (2nd month of and end of an academic year). Quantitative analysis resulted in two major findings. First, explicitation was more frequently used at the second stage than at the first, with seven of the eight specific means of explicitation increasing significantly in frequency. Second, the frequency of explicitation positively correlated with CI performance (with the correlation being stronger at the second than at the first stage), and the frequency of explicitation at the first stage significantly predicted CI performance at the second stage. Qualitative analyses (supported by retrospection and interview data) suggest that sufficient source language comprehension was a precondition for the use of explicitation. With interpreting training, these students became more audience-oriented and more capable of mediating between the speaker and the audience. Implications are discussed.