Coping With Cross-cultural Pragmatic Failures In Liaison Interpreting From The Perspective Of Conversational Principles

Liaison interpreting, in which an interpreter acts more as an escort andcommunication builder, facilitator and coordinator than simply a language transmitter,is applied in a wide range of fields and related tightly to the cultural backgrounds ofboth parties in communication. Therefore, a liaison interpreter may be more affectedby cultural obstacles and thus commits cross-cultural pragmatic failures. Pragmaticfailure refers to the undesirable communicative effects that the participants can notunderstand accurately what the speaker really means so that they fail to expressproperly the implication of the speaker or their expressions are inconsistent with thelinguistic convention of the target language. The mainstream study on pragmaticfailures focuses on translation rather than oral interpretation. In this paper, typicalcases of pragmatic failures in cross-cultural communications and the coping tactics toavoid them are analyzed on the basis of the conversational principles, namely theprinciple of cooperation and the principle of politeness. Firstly, the types ofcross-cultural pragmatic failures are classified and some typical cases are analyzedfrom the maxims of principle of cooperation and principle of politeness. Then thecauses for cross-cultural pragmatic failures are explored from the perspective ofcultural value, thinking pattern, and negative cultural transfer. At last, coping tactics toavoid cross-cultural pragmatic failures are treated in details from the perspective ofdevelopment of cross-cultural awareness, enrichment of interpreting skills, andexertion of interpreter’s subjectivity.