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Communication Strategies In Interpretation From Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives

Posted on:2012-01-05Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:Q X LiuFull Text:PDF
GTID:1115330368476423Subject:English Language and Literature
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
With the increasing communication and cooperation between countries in the world, much attention has been paid to the study of interpretation. Interpretation is an extempore and unpredictable oral activity in which information is transformed from a source language into a target language. It is regarded as a dynamic cross-cultural oral communication process. As the work of the interpreter is the key to the success of the cross-cultural communication, the interpreter is usually faced with much stress. However, different from written translation in which only the translator is present, the presence of all the parties involved in the interpreting communication brings pressure as well as some advantages in communication.The nature of interpretation requires an interpreter to complete the decoding and encoding processes in a fairly short time. During interpreting, the interpreter often encounters difficulties caused by psychological problems, insufficient knowledge of the language and the cultural gap. These problems will impede the interpreter's understanding, memorizing and re-expression, resulting in misinterpretation or leakage in the interpretation and undermining the performance. Thus, the interpreter has to employ communication strategies to achieve the goal of communication.The strategic study covers many disciplines such as general linguistics, psycholinguistics, cognitive psychology, cross-cultural studies, etc. This dissertation focuses on the study of communication strategies in interpretation from the cross-disciplinary perspectives of psychology, linguistics and cross-cultural studies. The strategy is an analysis platform between epistemology and methodology, the transitional phase between theory and practice. Therefore, the study here focuses on the theoretical analysis and inductive analysis of those strategies together with examples of practical performance aimed at introducing theoretical guidelines to solve the specific problems.Bachman proposed a model in which he believed that communicative competence includes three main parts: language competence, strategic competence and psychological mechanisms. In this model, we can see that the strategy is a part of communication competence. The study of strategies in cross-cultural interpretation can facilitate the study of communicative competence in bilingual communication. Communication strategies are one of the important aspects of an interpreter's translation competence employed to achieve the communicative goal. The effective use of communication strategies relies on the interpreter's mastery of systematic knowledge. Besides the language capacity, as a psychological plan of language, the usage of communication strategies is subject to the constraints of cognitive mechanisms and psychological factors, and it is also subject to the constraints of the working condition such as the time and place of the interpreting, etc. As interpretation is a bilingual communication, the use of communication strategies is bound to be under the constraints of cross-cultural factors.Based on substantial related research, combined with the characteristics of interpretation, the author makes a detailed analysis on the coping strategies of the interpreter to deal with the problems caused by psychological, linguistic and cross-cultural factors from the perspective of communication strategies, analyzing frequently-used communication strategies in interpretation, such as inference strategies, stalling strategies, avoidance strategies, note-taking strategies, repair strategies, compensation strategies, cooperation strategies and non-verbal strategies. The author also describes the selection of the employment of the communication strategies. A competent interpreter does not just have a mastery of all kinds of knowledge, but he/she knows how to use various strategies for dealing with the numerous unknown problems awaiting him/her in interpreting.Compared with simultaneous interpretation, the pause between the listening phase and the reformulation phase in consecutive interpretation,which is the more widely used interpretation in daily life, leaves interpreters free of heavy time constraints and makes it possible for them to use some communication strategies discussed here, such as note-taking strategies, cooperation strategies and non-verbal strategies to deal with possible communication breakdown. Thus, in this dissertation, the communication strategies discussed here are suitable for interpretation in general, but especially for consecutive interpretation. Most of the examples are taken from consecutive interpreting materials. As a part of communicative competence to facilitate communication, the study of the communication strategies employed in interpretation is of great significance.
Keywords/Search Tags:interpretation, communication strategies
PDF Full Text Request
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