Intercultural Communication Barriers And Interpreting Strategies In Chinese-English Tourist Interpreting

Commander Zhang’s Mansion as a famous cultural site in Shenyang has been popular with foreign tourists. The interpreter is entrusted by an overseas student from an English-speaking country for Chinese-English tourist interpreting for her visit to Commander Zhang’s Mansion. This paper is based on the practice of the tourist interpreting. The commentaries for Commander Zhang’s Mansion feature strong Chinese cultural characteristics. For a foreign student who knows little about the Chinese culture, it is very hard to understand. In the process of the interpreting practice, the communication barriers brought by the culture are obvious. Therefore, a cultural coordinator of tourism interpreter must be able to promote the cultural exchanges between the cultures loaded by the tourist destination and the culture background of the tourist, so that the cross-cultural communication barriers can be reduced to a minimum.Under the guidance of the cross-cultural adaptation theory in the cross-cultural communication, the author analyses the three kinds of cross-cultural communication barriers(differences of language expressions, vacancy of cultural images and differences of cultural images) in Chinese-English tourist interpreting, and then puts forward four kinds of interpreting coping strategies, including supplement, paraphrase, omission and image substitution strategy, and discusses the application of these strategies during the tourist interpreting practice of Commander Zhang’s Mansion. Finally, the interpreter makes conclusions for the interpreting practice, for reference of other Chinese-English tourist interpreters.