Nonverbal Communication In Interpretation

Interpersonal communication has two channels: verbal and nonverbal. Nonverbal communication can be further divided into four groups, namely, kinesics, paralanguage, object language, and environmental language. These nonverbal signals are of great importance to people's interaction with each other. People are born with the skill to communicate in nonverbal channel, which, to great extent, helps people to better understand others'communication intentions. It is therefore conducive for the interpreter to better comprehend the incoming messages and thus deliver them correctly, since interpretation aims at facilitating communication between people of different language backgrounds. Nonverbal signal repeats, substitutes, complements, emphasizes, regulates and contradicts verbal messages. This paper focuses on kinesic behavior and paralanguage since their influence on interpretation are believed to be more conspicuous, compared with other categories of nonverbal communication.This paper begins with introducing different types of kinesic behavior and paralanguage and their influence on verbal messages. As interpretation is an intercultural communication activity, cross-cultural factors are naturally discussed in the paper. Based on the traits of nonverbal communication and the analysis of intercultural factors, the author summarizes possible difficulties interpreters may encounter in comprehending and delivering nonverbal messages and gives corresponding suggestions. Besides, this paper introduces the theory of translation based on socio-semiotics and put forward the idea that its principle should become the guideline of dealing with nonverbal signals in interpretation.