Liaison Interpreter’’s Strategies In Confrontational Situations

Liaison interpreting is more widely used compared with conference interpreting, but current studies on liaison interpreting are far less than that of conference interpreting, particularly the studies on liaison interpreting strategies. Hence the author attempts to probe into liaison interpreting strategies, focusing on those for confrontational situations based on her internship as a liaison interpreter in NDC project of China National Petroleum Corporation(CNPC) Baoji Oilfield Machinery Co., Ltd(BOMCO). Through analyzing the situations in question, reflecting on her own performance based on extensive reading about interpreter’s subjectivity, questionnaire investigation and repeated adjustment of her strategies, the author developed a set of interpreting strategies to pacify the anger and facilitate the communication of the two sides, namely, adequate task preparation, omitting swear words, filtering rude contents, adjusting angry remarks, providing background information, explaining the reason for the anger, soothing the angry speakers and lightening up the atmosphere. This set of strategies are expected to help liaison interpreters to give full play to his/her subjectivity and play a better role as a mediator and facilitator of the communication so as to prevent contingencies from going bad to worse.