Intercultural Pragmatic Failures In Interpretation And The Tentative Solutions

In the complicated process of interpretation, the lack of interpreters'cross-cultural awareness leads to covert pragmatic failures which are sources of misunderstanding and even communication breakdowns. In this paper, abundant examples are presented to first illustrate the differences between English and Chinese the two languages differ from each other greatly in culture, and then the pragmatic failures caused by the cultural differences appearing in the real practice of interpretation. The paper tries to explore causes of the pragmatic failures from the perspective of cultural differences between English and Chinese and prove that interpreters'linguistic competence does not equal to pragmatic competence. An acute sensitivity to cultural difference between source and target languages will undoubtedly help the interpreter to master the pragmatic compass and overcome the restraints of cultural elements. The present situation of interpreters'training program and tentative solutions to improve interpreters'cross-cultural awareness and prevent the pragmatic failures by loaning translating techniques are also covered in the paper.