Information Screening In Liaison Interpreting

Based on data from three business match-making talks,this report describes particular challenges faced by the author as a liaison interpreter.By analysing the cases,the author tries to figure out the reasons behind the challenges and their corresponding coping strategies.The interpreting task discussed in this report lasted for three days,during which the author worked as an English-Chinese liaison interpreter for a Czech entrepreneur and several Chinese company representatives.After the interpreting task,the author made a verbatim transcript of the recordings of 1.5 hours,11000 words in total.Statistics collected from the transcript highlighted the information screening as the major source of difficulties for both the comprehension of the source language and the output in the target language.By analysing the characteristics of the discourse in liaison interpreting,the author comes up with specific strategies for information screening and structuring from a Relevance-Theoretical perspective.The central claim of the Relevance Theory noted “human communication creates an expectation of optimal relevance”.(Sperber and Wilson,1986: 158)On the part of the hearer,an utterance of optimal relevance would “yield adequate contextual effects at minimal processing cost”(Gutt,1991:30).Based on this notion,an interpreter as a communicator is expected to interpret in such a way that the audience could easily understand the information without extra processing effort.Moreover,the principle of relevance sheds light on how to screen information during the interpreting task.The three cases based on the principle of relevance will lead to three specific strategies of information screening: logic building,information contextualisation and manipulation of the original content to avoid conflict.