Liaison Interpreters’ Roles In Business Settings

Globalization is an irreversible trend and China, since Reform and Opening-Up,especially after its accession to WTO has developed an ever increasing economic boundwith foreign countries. With more and more foreign companies’ attending trade andcommodity fairs, purchasing Chinese products, visiting factories, negotiating deals, seekinginvestment and cooperation opportunities, wining and dining with Chinese counterparts, theneed for liaison interpreters rises dramatically. It is often the case that liaison interpreters inbusiness settings encounter different and unexpected situations thus having to assumevarious roles accordingly as to push forward business communications.This paper is based on the liaison interpreting tasks conducted by the author at the111thCanton Fair in2012. Most of the interpreting service was carried out in businesssettings. Drawing from the practices at111thCanton Fair, the author summarizes5roles thatliaison interpreters in business settings assume which are employees of the client,information deliverer, conversation facilitator, conflict preventer and mediator, culturalbroker and coordinator.What directly inspires the author to study the liaison interpreters’ role in businesssettings is the finding of the chaos in Guangzhou’s interpreting market. In this paper, theauthor conducts case analysis on liaison interpreters’ roles in business settings and wishesthis paper prove to be useful for the future reference of candidate interpreters. In a broadermeaning, the author intends to call upon more attention to the establishment of a formalorganization for liaison interpreters and a profession admission mechanism.