A Report On Interpreting For The ORBIS Flying Eye Hospital Project

On April 14th,2014, ORBIS Flying Eye Hospital began a two-week ophthalmic training program in Jinan with Shandong Red Cross Eye Hospital. As an ad hoc interpreter, the author actively participated in this project and interpreted for surgeries, training sessions and consultations between doctors and patients. Under the guidance of Cooperative Principle, the interpreter provided precise and high-quality interpreting service, which facilitated the communication and cooperation between ORBIS and the Chinese side.Medical interpreting might be easily influenced by different medical settings, cognition gaps, physical conditions of patients, etc. According to Grice, interlocutors of a conversation tend to, sometimes unconsciously, obey Cooperative Principle for a common purpose. However, in the medical interpreting practice, some interlocutors might violate certain maxims of Cooperative Principle for the sake of "face problems" or negative moods, which should be noticed by the interpreter. In this project, under the guidance of Cooperative Principle, the interpreter applied proper interpreting strategies to facilitate the communication between doctors and patients. Therefore, Cooperative Principle could serve as an effective supplement to medical interpreting.This report consists of five chapters. The main content is introduction to the project, description of the interpreting process, features of medical interpreting and the theory of Cooperative Principle, the application of Cooperative Principle in the project, and the interpreter’s reflections.