On Cross-cultural Pragmatic Failures In Interpretation And Their Interpretation Strategies

Cross-cultural communication is becoming more common, as the rapid development of economy, politics and culture. Interpreting is a direct and face-to-face intercultural communicative activity. Interpretation plays an important role in cross-cultural communication as a cross-cultural communicative activity. In cross-cultural communication, the role an interpreter plays determines that the interpreter is responsible for bridging the gap between both languages and cultures. Cross-cultural communication competence, including linguistic competence, cultural competence and pragmatic competence, is very important to interpreters.For a long time, the study of interpretation has been confined to linguistic competence and interpretation skills. Cultural and pragmatic factors are quit often ignored in interpretation analysis and practice, which could bring about wrong deciphering and comprehension of source messages, or even the consequence of communication breakdown. Even though it is significant, cross-cultural communication competence has long been ignored in interpreter training. The interpreter training is also focused only on some basic skills and linguistic aspects. However, it is proved by facts that interpreters'linguistic competence is unnecessarily in direct proportion to their cross-cultural communication competence.The thesis is composed of three chapters:In Chapter One, firstly, a brief introduction to pragmatics and pragmatic differences is given. Pragmatics is a new research field of linguistics. This part gives a detailed analysis on the causes of pragmatic differences from the three perspectives: language, the language speakers and the language itself. Then, it introduces pragmatic differences with lots of examples. There are many pragmatic differences in social activities. At the end of Chapter One, it gives the guidance and countermeasure to avoid pragmatic differences. A new translation theory—pragmatic translation is introduced. It is opposite to semantic translation and it is a concept of translation equivalence. Pragmatic translation can be sorted into two kinds: sociopragmatic equivalence and pragmalinguistic equivalence.Chapter Two gives a detailed analysis on the causes of pragmatic failures in interpretation. It's from the aspects of culturally-loaded words and cultural perceptions. In the part of culturally-loaded words, it explains the causes of pragmatic failures from the two aspects. They are social and custom distinctions and image patterns. In the part of cultural perceptions, it explains the causes of pragmatic failures from the two aspects, which are different world perceptions and different mentality and thinking patterns.Chapter Three explains the importance of interpreters'cross-cultural awareness and how to improve their cross-cultural awareness. Then, some interpretation techniques which can enhance interpreters'pragmatic competence are explained. They are literal translation, substitution, omission and free translation. It makes tentative solutions on how to overcome cross-cultural pragmatic failures. Interpreters should cultivate their cross-cultural awareness and enhance their abilities in interpretation. Besides, they should practice various skills and techniques and act in a professional manner.There are two reasons to write this paper. Firstly, the study of interpretation has been confined to the summary of interpreting skills and the linguistic aspects of interpreting. According to some materials, there are few academic books studying interpretation from an interdisciplinary angle, and fewer from the angles of pragmatic failure and cross-cultural communication. The barriers caused by cultural differences and pragmatic differences between Chinese and English in interpreting deserve full attention. This thesis tends to study interpretation and interpreter training from the aspect of cross-cultural communication and pragmatic failure. Secondly, in practice, pragmatic failure in interpreting is very common. Interpreters'should improve their cross-cultural communication competence, pragmatic competence and cultural competence. This thesis tries to offer a few basic studies on this subject and raise tentative suggestions on how to improve the interpreters'cultural and pragmatic competence to induce more valuable opinions and more in-depth studies in this field.This thesis puts forward some feasible interpretation strategies to overcome pragmatic failures by analyzing the phenomenon of pragmatic failures. Firstly, improve interpreters'intercultural awareness and sensitivity between source and target language from two way, which are teaching the culture knowledge and training the culture understanding. It employs several interpretation methods to handle the cultural factors in the process of interpretation, for example, pragmatic equivalent interpretation, handling fuzzy information, substitution, addition, sentence structure adjustment.This thesis reaches the conclusion that interpreters must conduct constant and in-depth analyses of the reasons of pragmatic failures and try to avoid them in specific interpretations, thus ensuring effective communications among all parties. Studying the linguistic phenomenon of interpretation from the aspect of cross-cultural pragmatics will help to evaluate interpretation quality, and leads the interpreters to reduce or avoid pragmatic failure in interpretation through practice to achieve better interpretation. Interpretation needs the input and integration of other disciplines, which serve as guiding theories and greatly enhance the overall interpretation performance.There are mainly two innovative points in this thesis. For one thing, interpretation has fewer research achievements than written translation as a newly emerged research field. And many of these researches are on the subject of interpreting techniques, interpretation theories and practices, etc. So far, from the aspects of cross-cultural communication and pragmatic failure, no monograph on interdisciplinary studies of interpretation has been found, according to the materials available. But cross-cultural pragmatic failure and interpretation are closely related. Barriers caused by cross-cultural pragmatic differences are quite common in interpreting. One of the goals of interpreting is to iron out the cross-cultural pragmatic differences. Therefore it is meaningful to study interpretation from the angles of cross-cultural communication and pragmatic failure. For another, at present, interpreter training is mostly focused on how to improve interpreters'linguistic competence and some basic skills, but interpreters'pragmatic competence and cultural competence are neglected. Practically, pragmatic failure is ubiquitous in cross-cultural interpretation. Hence, improving interpreters'cross-cultural communication competence, especially cultural competence and pragmatic competence, should become a focal point in interpreter training.To sum up, the innovative point of this study is to take an interdisciplinary approach to explore the phenomenon and reasons of the cross-cultural pragmatic failure in interpretation and the possible countermeasures for eliminating these failures. Besides, through the investigation and analysis of cross-cultural pragmatic failure, this study tries to throw some lights on the strategies adopted in interpretation and interpreter training.