ABSTRACT
This study quantitatively analyzes the motivations for self-repairs among Russian police interpreters and their retrospection-based causes to examine the difficulties encountered by interpreters. The study found that interpreters make fewer self-repairs as their competency increases, but the number of repairs was not related to directionality. Competent interpreters are more likely to make overt-repairs, while inexperienced interpreters tend to depend on covert-repairs. The higher the interpreting skills, the higher the share of Appropriateness repairs (A-repairs) and the lower the share of Error repairs (E-repairs), Different information repairs (D-repairs), and covert-repairs. A-repairs were used frequently to reduce ambiguity and deliver the speaker’s intention more clearly. E-repairs were used to correct errors due to the lack of knowledge of legal terms. Covert-repairs were used to conceive the content of interpretation and to buy time to make overt-repairs. D-repairs were used to rearrange the order of information in the original text to match the grammar of the target language. The study showed that participants make self-repairs as a strategy to address difficulties encountered in interpretation, including legal terms, Korean investigative culture, and characteristics of the Korean language.
