The Application Of Interpretive Theory In Business Interpreting

This report is a business interpreting practice conducted by the author. The author was one of the interpreters for the Lancaster China Catalyst which was launched by the Guangdong Department of Science and Technology. The author chooses the transcription of this task as the case and probes into several interpretive approaches that can be applied to interpreting practice.This report describes the whole interpreting process, including the pre-task preparation, task description and self-evaluation as well as the case study based on the Interpretive Theory. The author summarizes that with the uniqueness of business interpreting, interpreters are required to master abundant extra-linguistic knowledge in terms of the amount of terminologies and business background. Language proficiency, however, can not serve as a supplement to the background knowledge. In other words, if the interpreter can not understand the real sense of the speaker, the business negotiation will be doomed to fail.Seleskovitch and Lederer are two famous representatives of the Interpretive Theory. What they believed is that meaning is the most important factor in interpreting. The three key factors of Interpretive Theory are applied to this report: comprehension, deverbalization and re-expression. By analysing cases in the report, the author puts forward three strategies: omission, paraphrase and reorganization that can be applied in business interpreting based on interpretive theory. When we discuss cases with interpretive theory, the author believes that interpretive theory can be used effectively in business interpreting to improve performance of interpreters which also makes hearers easy to understand.