Analysis Of The Role Of English-Chinese And Chinese-English Court Interpreters In China From The Perspective Of Interpretive Theory

With the globalization, China and other countries witness further development in the cooperation and exchanges in economic, trade and cultural sectors. Therefore, the foreign-related disputes keep increasing these years. As a result, the demand for qualified court interpreters has risen sharply. However, the research on court interpreting does not keep pace, no matter in academic circle or in legal field. Court interpreting in China has not been attached enough importance.Court interpreters are playing a crucial role in bilingual/multilingual courtrooms. Court interpreters are communication participants in courtrooms. In order to remove language barriers between the parties and ensure smooth development of communication, court interpreters need to convey the sense of the parties instead of simple language translation, which fits in well with the interpretive theory. Therefore, the interpretive theory can provide theoretical ground and guidance for the research on the role of court interpreters in China.This thesis reviews previous researches on the role of court interpreters. Based on the interpretive theory, selecting some cases and taking into consideration the characteristics of Chinese legal system, the thesis analyses the role that court interpreters in China should play in courtrooms from a new perspective. Furthermore, strategies for how to play this role in bilingual/multilingual courtrooms are introduced and discussed as well by analyzing some cases.After detailed discussion and analysis on court interpreting from the perspective of interpretive theory, the thesis reaches the following conclusion:court interpreters in China are playing a role of language barrier remover. As to the strategies of how to play such a role, it is suggested that the interpreters obtain the sense of the source language with the help of cognitive complements, and then convey the sense to target listeners. At the stage of expression, the source message should be rendered in target language accurately and completely, and conveyed exactly in the same manner as the source message was spoken.