On The Role Of Dialogue Interpreter From A Relevance-theoretic Perspective

To explore interpreting problem with an interdisciplinary perspective hasattracted more and more interest of scholars and researchers both from the interpretingfield and other fields during the past decades. With the mature of interdisciplinarystudies of interpreting issues, the perspective of examining and defining the role ofinterpreter has also been greatly broadened. Since it was put forward by Sperber andWilson (1986a), relevance theory has aroused great interest from researchers. As atheory in cognition and communication, it offers some very instructive perspectives ininterpreting studies.This thesis makes a tentative discussion on the role of the dialogue interpreter from arelevance-theoretic perspective. The various perspectives of relevance theory such asthe ostensive-inferential communication model, communicative and informativeintentions, optimal relevance, processing effort and contextual effect, interpretive useof language, mutual cognitive environment etc. provide solid theory foundation inguiding the role positioning of the interpreter. Based on literature review and practiceexamples the author first analyzes the role of the dialogue interpreter from therelevance-theoretic perspective from the two stages of consecutive interpreting, i.e.listening comprehension stage and reproduction stage. The process of the dialogueinterpreting can be viewed as an ostensive-inferential communication process, withthe dialogue interpreter playing both the role of addressee and speaker and s/he shouldtry her/his best to transfer the original communicators’ intentions guided by theprinciple of relevance. As a dialogue interpreter, s/he has some power and controlover the conversation, but to what extent and how should they exercise their powerand control? The author tries to answer these two questions by introducing the notionof interpretive use, optimal relevance, processing effort and contextual effect. In thelast part of the thesis, the author will further put forward some interpreting copingtactics for the dialogue interpreter based on the RT theory, i.e. the dialogue interpretershould fully prepare before the task to correctly catch the communicator’s intentions during the conversation, besides the dialogue interpreter should also cultivatecross-cultural awareness to enlarge his/her mutual cognitive environment with boththe two primary parties and best transfer their intentions. Besides, processing effortand contextual effect are also two important factors that the interpreter should alsotake into consideration when s/he is selecting a rendition. Extra processing effort mustentail to yield extra contextual effect.