A Practice Report Of Liaison Interpreting

This thesis elaborates on the interpreting strategies and the roles of interpreters in liaison interpreting. The interpreter did the interpreting task for the Educational Leadership Learning Exchange Program which is short for ELLE program. It is an exchange program between Chinese and American principals co-hosted by South China Normal University, Vanderbilt University and Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools.The reason for the interpreter to choose this practice is that this task includes two small interpreting tasks with the first one in the morning being a relatively formal occasion and the second one being an informal one. This task is distinctively representative since the strategies and the roles vary with the two occasions. The interpreter finds out that a competent interpreter should not only be equipped with sound interpreting skills such as the interpreting strategies but also could play different roles in different occasions.This report is divided into four parts including task description,process description,case analysis and conclusion. In the first part, the interpreter makes a brief introduction to the ELLE program, the speakers and herself as an interpreter. Then a description of the specific task has been made so that what the interpreter has done is clarified clearly. At the end of part one, the interpreter discusses the definition of liaison interpreting since this report would like to elaborate on the strategies and roles of interpreters in liaison interpreting. In the second part, the interpreter mainly describes the whole process of this interpreting task. With regards to pre-interpreting preparation, the interpreter has made great efforts to do it well. The interpreter makes clear what should do and should not do as an interpreter and makes out a schedule for the preparation. The interpreter also lists the channels she collects information including volunteers’manual, glossaries and parallel texts. The second part in the preparatory work describes the interpreting performance for a seminar and a school and home visit. After description of the on-interpreting performance,the interpreter asks the evaluation from the speakers and does her own reflectionThe third part plays a crucial role in this report. The interpreter chooses some extracts from her transcription of her interpreting recording and analyzes what interpreting strategies she has adopted and what roles she has played during the tasks. The strategies range from conversion, inversion,repetition,division and amplification. The interpreter serves as different roles varying with the occasions. Since the speech in the morning is formal, the interpreter’s main responsibility is to convey message between two sides while the occasion in the evening is less formal,the interpreter plays such roles as an information deliverer and a cultural mediator. The interpreter concludes the third part by reflecting on the mistakes and comparing the two small tasks. In the last part, the interpreter discusses the difficulties and solutions,limitations and significance for further study.