Variation In Business Interreting In The Light Of Skopos Theory

Although the fast development of world economy and the increasing business and economic communication and exchanges require more and more professional interpreters who are not only excellent in linguistic ability as well as interpreting competence, but also can deal with various business activities, especially the complex business negotiations and conferences. But when it comes to the business negotiations and conferences, only very excellent interpreters will be qualified. However, at present, most interpreters working with business activities are not qualified enough. Some are general interpreters without enough knowledge background, some are part-timers, and some are members of the companies but can speak two languages. The big gap between high demand and low supply makes it an urgent task to promote this new occupation to be professional and regulated. Unfortunately, in the research area, few people ever studied this branch of interpretation specifically. The results or conclusions of business interpretation studies are mainly the byproducts of the studies of consecutive or simultaneous interpretations. There is no systematic knowledge about the business interpretation.The interpreters always face a large number of performances affecting factors:listening comprehensions, unexpected intervention in the working condition, physical indisposition and even psychological toughness under bilingual intercultural communication at a severely limited time. Since great differences between the source language and the target language exist in terms of culture, ideology, modes of thinking, and linguistic forms, which set a great challenge for the interpreter to find a totally equivalent expression to the original message both in form and in meaning, particularly under the limitation of time. It is impossible for the interpreter to keep the original unchanged in the output, which make interpretation a creative activity possible. The interpreter, as a cultural meditation, must make his or her arduous efforts to overcome these obstacles covering cultural, social, ideological and linguistic background. Therefore, in order to make the meaning delivered by the original speaker alive and more harmonious with the atmosphere, interpreter purposefully deviates from the original message, such as form, content, language or style, to maximize semantic and functional and pragmatic equivalence with the original message and to obtain optimal communicative effect. In other words, interpreters employ those ingenious approaches at the level of words, phrases, sentences and discourses, contribute to better communicative force. In a broad sense, interpreters flexibly use the various adaptations such as addition, omission, alteration and reorganization to the original. This is called the interpretation variation in this thesis. The interpreter’s subjective creativity is most enhanced in the dynamic process. The variation as a totally new concept in translation studies was first put forward by Professor Huang Zhonglian in the late1990s, from the essence of which basic concepts concerning seven adaptations and variation methods are derived. Furthermore, Professor Huang Zhonglian provides a framework for the translation variation theory with an illustration in the logical relationship among all concepts, which in turn provides efficacious theoretical principles and scientific methodology for the translation or interpretation variation studies. Skopos theory offers a new theoretical basis for the variation, namely, the end justifies the means, and the strategies and methods are determined by the intended purpose and function, which is suitably applied to the pragmatic strategy as positive misinterpretation with an intended purpose. From the perspective of Skopos theory, an entire equivalence between the source text and the target text is inaccessible; the translation is a form of purposeful behavior and translators are supposed to reproduce the source text for the target addressees in a given translational situation to achieve intended communicative purposes, which is the authentic function of the variation.The business interpreters have become an indispensable part to bridge the language barrier between different countries due to the fast development of global economy and growing contacts and cooperation in politics, science&technology, education, economy and culture. The business interpreters often function differently at the same time, for example, conducting as a bridge of languages for negotiators of both parties; Adjusting negotiating atmosphere; Assisting his client to fulfill their set goals; Serving as a consultant or secretary for the negotiators of his or her own side. In order to achieve various purposes, the business interpreters have to adopt the variation strategy at some cases, which is the focus of the thesis.This thesis is divided into four chapters. Chapter One proposes a new theoretical framework of "Skopos Theory". Chapter Two introduces the notion of the variation and elaborates the Skopos theory is the dominating factor for the variation. Chapter Three introduces business interpreting, in which the types of business interpretation, features of business interpretation and business interpreters are portrayed. Chapter Four demonstrates a lot of examples to justify the business interpreters conducting variation out of certain purposes, such as softening the business negotiating atmosphere, making target audience with different cultural background better understanding the target text and etc.