Community Interpreter’’s Power Role-A Practice Report On Interpreting For A Foreigner About Dealing With Traffic Ticket

In recent years, with the enhancement of comprehensive national power and opening-up, an increasing number of foreigners have come to live, work, study or do business in China. As a result, the demand for community interpreters is also on the rise, leading more and more people paying attention to community interpreting studies. Under the guidance of Bourdieu’s Social Practice Theory and Foucault’s Concept of Power, this thesis aims at analyzing the power role and power circulation of community interpreters based on the author’s personal interpreting practice at Xi’an Gaoxin Traffic Police Station.First of all, the author summarizes two dilemmas she has encountered during interpreting: 1) whether to be an invisible “conduit” or a visible power figure in the dialogue when asked to participate into the communication by speakers; and 2) how the power was held by interpreters’ works and how to wield it once interpreters got involved into the communication. To address such problems, the author firstly dissects community interpreting by applying three key concepts of Bourdieu’s Social Practice Theory: field, habitus and capital, reaching a conclusion that every agent holds power in community interpreting, so community interpreters are power figures. Then under the framework of Foucault’s Concept of Power, the author concludes that the power possessed by agents interacts mutually among them in the form of empowerment and disempowerment. Last but not least, the thesis presents how interlocutors and interpreters empower or disempower each other by using examples from her practice. To sum up, the thesis intends to guide community interpreters to better position themselves in interpreting and produce quality outcome by elucidating the idea that they are power figures during interpreting and their power interacts with that of the speakers’.