BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//pretalx//conference-hub.linguistic-society.com//athens-2026//spea
 ker//LYVEK3
BEGIN:VEVENT
UID:pretalx-athens-2026-CVFCQM@conference-hub.linguistic-society.com
DTSTART:20260423T123000Z
DTEND:20260423T124500Z
DESCRIPTION:Abstract\nThis study examines the critical role of pause length
  and positioning in consecutive and simultaneous\ninterpretation between C
 hinese and Portuguese. Through empirical analysis of\n20 professional inte
 rpreters and 40 native Portuguese listeners\, we investigated how inapprop
 riate pause\ndistribution within sentence structures disrupts meaning tran
 smission and comprehension. Prosodic\nfeatures\, including pause patterns\
 , are essential to meaning construction in both Chinese and Portuguese.\nI
 n Chinese\, pauses often delineate semantic units and help disambiguate me
 aning in the absence of explicit\ngrammatical markers (Tseng\, 2006). In P
 ortuguese\, prosodic phrasing influences syntactic parsing and\npragmatic 
 interpretation (Frota & Vigário\, 2003). When interpreters introduce paus
 es that do not align\nwith target language prosodic expectations\, listene
 rs may erroneously segment the incoming speech\nstream\, resulting in misc
 omprehension (Seeber\, 2017). This is particularly problematic when interp
 reting\nbetween languages with different prosodic systems\, as between Chi
 nese and Portuguese.\nOur findings reveal that the typological distance be
 tween Chinese (an isolating\, tonal language with\ntopic-prominence) and P
 ortuguese (an inflectional\, stress-timed language with subject- prominenc
 e)\ncreates unique challenges for interpreters. Results indicate that inap
 propriately positioned pauses occurring\nat syntactically incorrect junctu
 res result in meaning fragmentation\, with a significant negative correlat
 ion\nbetween inappropriate pause placement and listener comprehension. Pas
 sages containing more than five\ninappropriate pauses per minute showed a 
 bigger reduction in comprehension accuracy. These findings\nhave substanti
 al implications for diplomatic\, business\, and legal interpretation conte
 xts and provide\nevidence- based recommendations for interpretation traini
 ng programs
DTSTAMP:20260419T080900Z
LOCATION:Online Session
SUMMARY:The Impact of Pause Distribution\, and Duration in Chinese Portugue
 se Interpretation: An Analysis of Meaning Disruption and Communicative Con
 sequences - Ana Margarida Belém Nunes
URL:https://conference-hub.linguistic-society.com/athens-2026/talk/CVFCQM/
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR