| With the development of Chinese tourism industry, more and more foreign tourists choose China as their tourist destination. The flourishing and booming development of inbound tourism exerts a great demand of guide interpreters. However, the present quality of guide interpreting in China can not live up to the expectations of foreign tourists. During the process of guide interpreting, guide interpreters may encounter a great number of problems such as language problems, communicative problems and so on. However, as said by Nida,"For truly successful translating, biculturalism is even more important than bilingualism, since words only have meanings in terms of the cultures in which they function." Therefore, cultural barriers are the most difficult problems faced by most guide interpreters.Skopos theory was one of the most influential translation theories put forward by Hans J. Vermeer in1970s. It views translation as a human action with a particular purpose, which determines what kind of translation methods and strategies should be adopted by the translator. While guide interpreting is a typical communicative and interpersonal human action, Skopos theory is feasible to be applied to guide interpreting.This paper aims at applying Skopos theory to overcome cultural barriers encountered by guide interpreters during the process of guide interpreting, looking for a significant theoretic frame to overcome cultural barriers in guide interpreting as well as broadening the applicable field of Skopos theory.This paper firstly gives an overview of Skopos theory as well as the classification of culture. Secondly, the Skopos and characteristics of guide interpreting are analyzed. Next, the paper gives an analysis of cultural barriers in guide interpreting and some interpreting approaches are put forward by the author under the guidance of Skopos theory. At last, this paper reaches a conclusion that Skopos theory plays a crucial role in overcoming cultural barriers in guide interpreting. |
