The Influence Of Cross-cultural Factors In Interpretation And Coping Strategies

With the deepening of globalization, the economic, political and cultural exchanges between different countries are rapidly increasing. Interpreting as a professional practice came into being along with the growing demand for communication between different language speaking countries. Although professional interpreting did not appear until early last century, it has been developing fastly within a short period. People are getting to know more about interpreting and the special characteristics of interpreting involving cross-cultural factors has attracted more attention. To some extent, more than oral translating one language into another, interpreting is transmitting one culture into another. As a result, interpreters are cultural mediators, bridging different cultures.The thesis gives a brief introduction about interpreting studies at home and abroad, followed by defining a list of concepts, including interpretation, interpreter, culture and cross-culture, so as to equip readers with clear concepts. After analyzing the close relation between language and culture, the thesis discusses the influence of cross-cultural factors, mainly geographical, customary, religious and historical elements in interpretation, thus testifying that interpreting is more cross-cultural communication than mere lingual activity. According to Anderson’s Adaptive Control of Thoughts, all skilled behaviors require to transfer declarative knowledge into procedural knowledge through cognitive, associative and autonomous stages, which expounds on the significance of cross-cultural knowledge, awareness, sensitivity and competence to interpreters. Therefore, in addition to language skill training, interpreters should attach great importance to extra-lingual knowledge learning. Based on Nida’s Functional Equivalence Theory, the thesis comes up with domestication and foreignization coping strategies and later introduces several practical approaches in details, including annotation, paraphrase, omission, generalization, substitution and their application scope.