Business Interpreting Under The Cross-cultural Context

This thesis focuses on business interpreting under the cross-cultural context.China’s increasing influence in international affairs and the global existence of English language bring forth more business interactions between the language of English and Chinese. Business interpreting is characterized by its linguistic features of economic expression, frequent abbreviation, polysemy phenomenon and professional terms, and by its non-linguistic features of simultaneous pressure, comprehensive labor, complex content, isolated loneliness and cross-cultural communication. As a social activity,business interpreting exists under certain cultural context and cultural elements play an essential role in the activity of business interpreting. With the analysis of the difference between English culture and Chinese culture and the cultural phenomenon along with business interpreting, this thesis demonstrates that cross-cultural awareness is required in business interpreting. The Theory of Sense, as a current popular theoretical foundation in the study of interpreting, has been tested in the long run of time and practice. From the perspective of “the understanding of meaning” in the Theory of Sense, the author argues that the “de-verbalization” in business interpreting relies on the interpreter’s awareness of cultural elements and his/her appropriate strategy in handling them, which also shows the close relation between the correct understanding of meaning and the interpreter’s cultural consciousness. To cultivate the cross-cultural awareness in business interpreting, the author suggests that we could approach this from three aspects:enriching cultural knowledge, establishing systematic knowledge structure and enhancing cross-cultural awareness practice.