Practice Report On IHP Interpreting Field Work

For students majoring in interpreting and translation, field work has been set as a compulsory part for our study. Each student has to do the field work of no less than the required quantities. During the past two and a half years of post-graduate study, the author has strictly adhered to the guidelines of MTI education and has fulfilled the required field work tasks. The IHP interpreting field work is one of these tasks.The IHP, which is short for International Honors Program, is an escort interpreting practice of the author. On October22nd to November14th,2012,36American students under the project of IHP stayed in Changsha and had a study tour for three weeks, with the theme of Health and Community. During the process, IHP students were divided into seven groups and a lot of field visits were conducted including interviews of people of various jobs, visits to a local senior’s home, individual department of the medical station. They also paid visits to some renowned tourist sights of Changsha City and tasted famous Hunan Cuisine. The author provided interpreting service to one of the seven groups during these three weeks. Two kinds of interpreting situations are chosen and two kinds of interpreting are conducted:dining interpreting and tourism interpreting. The author elaborates the whole interpreting process of these interpreting scenes. Besides the introduction parts, this report is consisted of four chapters.Chapter1is the task description. This chapter mainly introduces IHP interpreting field work. Introduction of the cases mainly focuses on the task background, requirement of the clients, interpreter selection and interpreting division of work, task preparation, interpreting process, evaluation by the client, the role of the interpreter, etc.Chapter2is process description of the two IHP interpreting field work situations---dining interpreting and tourism interpreting, including the preparation, selecting of interpreting tactics and after-Interpreting sorting-out and reflection.Chapter3is the case analysis. It shows how the author performed in dining interpreting and tourism interpreting. Each type of interpreting has its unique features and typical problems the interpreter may come across. Prompt settlement of every difficulty is described. Some of the prompt settlement may be proper, but some may be not. Therefore, in this chapter, relative theories have been employed to analyze the performance of the author, such as the interpreter’s subjectivity consciousness, the effort model, fidelity and skopos theory, etc..Chapter4is a reflection of the interpreting field work. It brings up difficulties which did not be solved by the interpreter during the field work. It discusses the quality an interpreter should have and the limitations of the thesis. This chapter also proposes suggestions for further study.