Understanding Interpreting From Intercultural Communicative Perspective

With the rapid development in intercultural communication (IC), interpreters take on more and more important roles in this activity. With their bilingual and bicultural competences, they act as mediators in the intercultural communication, aiding the communicative participants to exchange messages successfully.The topic of this paper is to understand interpreting from the intercultural communicative perspective. The paper is divided into four chapters:Chapter one lets the readers have a general idea of intercultural communication, interpreting and the relationship between them. Intercultural communication is the communication between people of different cultural backgrounds. Two terms are very important ?culture and communication. Therefore, their definitions and characteristics are described briefly. Then the history and definition of IC are introduced. As for interpreting, a few lines are given to introduce its definition, history, types, process, and the qualities for interpreters. At last, the paper points out the relationship between IC and interpreting. Besides an inter-lingual activity, interpreting is also an IC activity, for during the process of interpreting, the cultural messages are transmitted as well.Chapter two focuses on interpreters' intercultural communicative competences. Since interpreting is an IC activity, it is of great significance for interpreters to improve their competences in this aspect. Far from being the translation machines that passively transmit massages from one language into another, they actively mediate the communication process with their bilingual and bicultural knowledge. This chapter firstly states that interpreters play active roles in interpreting, then it discusses the significance of interpreters' ICcompetences, which include IC awareness and cultural knowledge.Chapter three describes in detail interpreters' competences in the verbal communication (VC). Communication can be divided into two types: VC and NVC. This paper mainly discusses two types of cultural differences in the verbal aspect: in word connotations and in discourse styles. And then interpreters' solutions are introduced. They may use adaptation, alienation, mediation, etc. to solve the problems.Chapter four describes in detail interpreters' competences in the nonverbal communication (NVC), and the solutions to them. Cultural differences in this aspect is an unique feature of interpreting compared with written translation. Because interpreting happens in a face-to-face setting, participants' body movements, facial expressions, dressing styles, etc. will affect the communication process. This chapter firstly makes an introduction of NVC, then describes the relationship between NVC, culture and interpreting. At last, cultural differences in four types of NVC behaviors are introduced, which are body language, paralanguage, object language and environment language and interpreters solutions are given.In the conclusion, some questions that need further study are put forward.