On Improvement Of Business Interpreting In Light Of The Interpretive Theory Of Translation

Under the circumstance of ever closer contact between nations, business interpreting, as an occupation with short supply of talents, is playing an essential role in international exchanges. In order to improve the professional skills of interpreters, many scholars have made systematic study on business interpreting in terms of the competence requirements for the interpreters. Business English interpreting presents its unique characteristics. The success of business English interpreting relies mostly on the interpreters'extra-linguistic knowledge, such as background knowledge, business etiquette and business terms. Interpreting contains a great number of professional knowledge and terms, therefore, the interpreter's linguistic knowledge cannot make up the limitation of the professional knowledge. The negotiation may come to a halt if the interpreter fails to explain clearly what is under discussion.If the interpreter cannot explain what he has heard clearly when he needs to translate a lot of information, he may translate the literate meaning other than the essential sense. Against this background, French translation scholar Seleskovitch puts forward the Interpretive Theory which lays much emphasis on the process of translation. According to Interpretive Theory, the interpreter needs to undergo three stages before he puts what he heard into something equivalent and can be understood by the target audience in another language. In the first step, he should listen carefully and grasp the linguistic signs which embody the sense. In the second step, he should forget the structure of these linguistic symbols so as to just keep in mind the sense to be conveyed. Finally he should make a reorganized sentence to cover the meaning conveyed in another language and the sentence should meet with the following two requirements: the whole contents of the source language should be covered and it should be easy to be understood by the audience in target language. This stage is called reformation.In a word, interpreting is not a unilateral decoding process from the source language to the target language but a dynamic process between understanding the sense and reform the sense. The process when the interpreter translates French into English is like the process that a sweater in French style is taken apart, cleaned and weaved in to a new sweater in British style. The new one is still a sweater rather than any other clothes; however, the style is totally different from the former one.The purpose of the thesis is to discuss the way of improving business interpreting by acquiring extra-linguistic knowledge. As far as the requirement for interpreter in business field is concerned, extra-linguistic knowledge has been emphasized sufficiently. By making a comparative study on several business interpreting examples, the author has come to the conclusion that extra-linguistic knowledge plays an important role in business interpreting.