Pragmatic Functions of Interpreters’ Own Discourse Markers in Simultaneous Interpreting: A Case Study of the 2012 Chinese Spring Festival Gala

Taking authentic data from the simultaneous interpreting of the Chinese 2012 Spring Festival Gala as the corpus of this study, the present paper summarizes two kinds of pragmatic functions with regard to the discourse markers used in the corpus, namely passive markers and proactive markers. The discourse markers discussed here are used by the interpreters, not those they translated. The paper then discusses their functions with some examples. Finally, the reasons for using discourse markers are investigated. It is hoped that the research findings can shed some light on the success of simultaneous interpreters in use of discourse markers.