Quality Assessment In Business Interpreting

In this era of global economy, numerous business transactions take place each and every day across country borders. To facilitate such transactions across linguistic and cultural barriers, business interpreting has risen as a service in high demand. Thus quality assessment and control in business interpreting becomes imperative. The current thesis is an attempt toward this endeavor. The author proposes a communication oriented model based on users'expectation, in which a flexible changes of different quality criteria are considered. The dissertation starts with an introduction of the framework and main ideas, followed by four chapters of elaboration.Chapter 1 is an introduction of the basic definition, history and characteristics of business interpreting.Chapter 2 gives a critical review of the history of interpreting quality assessment. Research on interpreting assessment sprang up after the World War II when conference interpreting became a recognized profession. In assessing quality, considerations have been given to some fundamental criteria, such as fidelity, language, speed, etc... The author examines the research on interpreting assessment since the 1980s'from both theoretical and empirical perspectives and points out the existing problems in the field, which include the difficulties in collecting authentic data, experiment desire and control of variables.In Chapter 3 the author proposes a model for business interpreting assessment. Current quality assessment in business interpreting based on position analysis is not applicable as business communications are more often than not bi- or even multi- bilateral, during which the concepts of positions are quite fuzzy. The new model is drawn from the author's two empirical studies on users'expectation and the criteria's simulative function to facilitate business communication. With the perspective it is the author's suggestion that authentic data should be collected from experiment and scientific methodology for statistic analysis should be introduced. Through processing the data collected from questionnaires is transformed into a 100-mark system. Further, an assessment chart is devised to evaluate the overall performance of the business interpreting and interpreters'strengths and weaknesses on each variable.Chapter 4 suggests ways for quality improvement in business interpreting. Self-training and institutional training are 2 ways to improve the skills and knowledge of practitioners and trainees. Preparation for all assignments is further guarantee for the success of interpreting in business situations.