Interpreter Positioning

This report is based on the author’s interpreting experience for the World Bank-Financed Yunnan Honghe Prefecture Urban Transport Project. As one of the2012MTI students of Shandong University, the author engaged herself in the Project as a language service assistant of the Shandong University Feasibility Study Team (SDU FS Team) and mainly served a World Bank transportation specialist and two FS teams in charge of designs of integrated transport corridors (ITC) in Jianshui County and Mengzi City.The report mainly consists of three parts. The first part is an overall introduction of the background information of the World Bank-financed project, parties involved, itinerary of the interpreter during the conference and her preparation for the task as well. The second part debriefs the task following the line of transition of the interpreter’s role:a meddler in the beginning because of a problematic introduction, a participant fighting for her vocational rights and a visible party coordinating different parties with team spirit. During the task, the interpreter was cold-shouldered for many times at the beginning, which left her in a disadvantaged position for her interpretation later in the task. Both linguistic and extra-linguistic factors contributed to her positioning confusion in the process. Though with these challenges mentioned above, the interpreter "stood out" to adjust her role as a visible and cooperative participant and safeguard her rights and facilitate the communication between different parties. The third part analyzes the interpreter’s positioning confusion during the conference based on her perception of two guiding principles of interpreter positioning:an interpreter’s loyalty and power in interpreting activities.The author summarizes three criteria in terms of an interpreter’s loyalty:the working status of an interpreter, knowledge and experience of an interpreter, and sentimental and moral factors. The author also introduces two kinds of powers in summarizing her positioning during the task:the "institutional power", which is measured by the profession, the position, the expertise and experience a person represents in an institution, and "interactional power", which is granted to a person for his/her language competence and coordinating role in a conversation. The author finds that an interpreter, especially an interpreting student, might confront challenges to his/her vocational rights because of the lack of "institutional power" in real-life interpreting activities, thus making his/her discourse and "interactional power" constrained.In conclusion, it is important for an interpreter to position properly based on a thorough understanding of the theme, the client, participants, the setting, the working mode and the purpose of an interpreting activity, become visible sometimes and execute the interactional power to the best without losing confidence in faced with difficulties and disadvantages. Besides, the author also finds that instructions on translation and interpreting profession, cross-disciplinary cooperation and field practice or simulation are beneficial in interpretation training, in that it proves effective in developing interpreting learners’abilities, especially extra-linguistic ones, to identify and address problems.