On Cultural Differences And Coping Tactics In Business Interpretation

With the further development of globalization, economic activities and business negotiations are increasing tremendously. When people from different countries speaking different languages meet together, they always have difficulty in understanding each other, which gives rise to business interpreters.It is under such circumstances that business interpreting has arisen as a booming profession in recent years and has been drawing more and more attention. In China, many researches have been conducted in this regard. Scholars and experts in this field have made remarkable achievements by applying theory and perspective from neighboring disciplines, such as linguistics, translation theories, psycholinguistics, pragmatics, to name a few. However, most of the researches focus on summarizing experiences from business interpretation instead of viewing it from the perspective of intercultural communication.Business interpretation is not only a simple bilingual process of meaning transfer, but also a communicative activity that exchanges underlying cultural connotations. Therefore, business interpreters are required to have a deep understanding of the cultural differences between source language and target language, and to possess the coping tactics to deal with the problems proficiently. This thesis summarizes and classifies the cultural differences between Chinese and English cultures from an intercultural perspective, and provides some interpreting tactics to deal with them.This thesis is composed of five parts. Chapter one serves as introduction by providing background information about carrying out the study in business interpretation from the perspective of intercultural communication. Significance and objective of the thesis is to provide business interpreters with some coping tactics on the interpretation of cultural-loaded expressions in business activities. The second chapter puts forward the definition of business interpretation, culture, communication and intercultural communication, and brings the conclusion that business interpretation is in itself an act of intercultural communication. In the third chapter, cultural differences are examined from the aspect of verbal communication, including ways of addressing, greetings and leave-takings, courtesy expressions, cultural connotations of color, cultural connotations of animals, modes of thinking, and so on. Chapter Four provides five coping tactics to deal with cultural differences in business interpretation, namely, literal translation, free translation, explanation, domestication and foreignization. At last, conclusions and findings of the thesis are presented in Chapter Five.