A Study On Pragmatic Failure In Interpretation In Chinese-English Environment

As an important means of cross-cultural communication, interpretation has been widely accepted nowadays because of its obvious advantages, such as quick transmission of messages and prompt communication. It has established an important status in international communities. With the development of economic globalization and China's accelerating opening up, China is increasingly involved in international conferences and in close contact with the international community. Therefore, the demand of interpreting talents is increasing. And wider and deeper researches on interpretation are being carried out at home and abroad.This paper tries to study interpretation in Chinese-English environment from the perspective of pragmatic failure. It analyzes the reasons of pragmatic failure in interpretation and its influence on interpretation quality, and further explores measures taken to reduce or avoid pragmatic failure in interpretation. Interpretation is a means of cross-cultural communication. Various cultural differences exist among different cultures, and various pragmatic differences exist among different languages. This leads to the pragmatic failure in cross-cultural communication. The concept"pragmatic failure"was put forward by Dr. Jenny Thomas in Cross-Cultural Pragmatic Failure in 1983. It refers to improper expression in cross-cultural communication, and it is different from linguistic error. Studying the linguistic phenomenon of interpretation from the perspective of cross-cultural pragmatics will help to evaluate interpretation quality in an all-round way, and leads the interpreters to reduce or avoid pragmatic failure in interpretation through practice, so as to achieve better interpretation.