The Interplay Between Culture And Political Correctness In Interpreting

Interpreting is not only a simple bilingual process of transferring meaning, but also acommunicative activity that exchanges underlying cultural connotatio ns deep-rooted indifferent civilizations. Apart from language competence and technical skills, an interpreteris required to, above all, have a profound understanding of the deep-rooted cultural,political, religious, and historical background of different cultures in order to minimizepotential cultural offence due to cultural discrepancies.Political correctness in interpreting refers to the cultural and political connotations thatinterpreters need to keep in mind to minimize social and institutional offence inoccupational, gender, racial, cultural, sexual orientation, religious belief, disability, andage-related context. In current usage, the term is primarily pejorative, while the termpolitically incorrect has been used as an implicitly positive se lf-description.This paper tries to explore and summarize some of the major political correctnessdiscrepancies between Chinese and world’s other major civilizations from an inter-culturalperspective, analyze some of the cultural and historical background causing thesediscrepancies, and try to figure out some specific interpreting strategies to cope with them.Also this thesis tries to explore into the coping tactics used in various situations ininterpreting that requires special attention to political correctness and explains theimportance of flexible and comprehensive application of these tactics. In order to achievesuccessful interpreting, an interpreter should not only strengthen his theoretical basis, butmore importantly, promote his cultural sensitivity and inter-cultural awareness.