Application Of Functionalist Approaches In Interpreting

Interpreters carry weight in promoting the communication among people from different language communities and culture backgrounds. With the development of globalization, more and more qualified interpreters are highly demanded. Interpreting, which serves as a very important means and bridge in international exchange and cooperation in different fields, is now playing a vital role. This thesis advocates study on interpreting from the perspectives of German functionalist approaches and attempts to explore scientific theory and methodology guiding interpreting. Many experts and scholars from different perspectives have done numerous valuable researches into interpreting. Their researches are of great value in that they can shed light on and boost the upgrading of interpreting. But their studies don't take the purpose, the participants and functions of the translation into full account. German functionalist approaches break through the previous equivalence-based linguistic translation theories, widen the research scope and offer new perspectives for translation studies. Each interpreting activity is produced for a given purpose and should serve its purpose. According to functionalist approaches, the Skopos rises to be the utmost factor in translation process for making choices and decisions. Free interpretation, faithful interpretation and the combination of free and faith interpretation are discussed in the thesis, which still leave gracious room for scholar to further the study.Nord brings forward that translation brief is an important tool, not only for translation study but also for translation practice. It is used to identify translation problems and find way to work them out therefore. In interpreting activity, we can draw the interpreting brief before offering our interpretation, and infer feasible interpreting strategies upon the interpreting brief. it is advisable to use the strategies of alteration, omission, reorganization and fuzzy reference to crack the"hard nuts"of the communication and help interpreters fulfill the interpreting tasks.The analysis on the texts functions is also instructive in interpreting. In order to produce a coherent, concise and appreciate interpretation, text-analysis is a must. It is advisable for interpreters to produce interpreting strategies based on phonetic level, lexical level, and semantic level to meet the requirements of various communicative functions.This thesis consists of six sections. The first part of the thesis serves as an introduction, which presents the research background, significance of the study and motivation of the study. In the second section, after brief introduction to the characteristics, forms and criteria of interpreting, a sketchy review of the previous researches related to interpreting is presented with the purpose to identify the starting point of this research. In the third part, functionalist approaches, employed as the theoretical foundation of the present research, is analyzed in detail. The detailed analyses include Reiss's theory of texts functions, Vermeer's Skopotheorie, Manttari's theory of translational action and Nord's theory of function plus loyalty, of which the guiding rules of translation purpose, the roles that the participants playing in translation and the texts classifications are also involved. In the fourth section, interpreting practice is chiefly studied from receivers'point of view, distinctive features of interpreting are to be under investigated to check out how those fundamental elements influence interpreting, the investigation was conducted among college students, employees using English as main working language and vocational interpreters in companies. Section Five is contributed to application of functional approaches in interpreting. Each category is subdivided into detailed ones with abundant examples to illustrate the point. The last part of this thesis is a conclusion, based on the studies in the previous chapters.