A Report On The G20 Hangzhou Summit Telephone Interpreting Project

With the acceleration of globalization,China's unprecedented integration into the world and the rapid development of communication technology, telephone interpreting has been frequently applied in China. From 10 August to 10 September,2016, the reporter undertook the G20 Hangzhou Summit Telephone Interpreting Project, interpreting calls from English speakers. She encountered a series of barriers in a non-face-to-face communication situation with no visual information to resort to.There are three major problems. First, foreign accents against background noise caused more severe difficulty in non-face-to-face communication; second, inefficient communication resulted from information asymmetry; and third, different geographical locations of the two clients resulted in various difficulties. Based on repeated analyses of the recordings of her interpretation, and drawing upon literature from home and abroad, the reporter proposes three solutions: first, make adequate preparations before interpreting; second, improve the ability to effectively direct the conversation, and lastly, get familiar with general information of the city from which the call comes. Finally, the reporter makes three suggestions to improve the quality of telephone interpreting: reducing telephone interpreters' working time; optimizing the training program for telephone interpreting; and offering telephone interpreting course in institutions of higher learning. This report offers reference for MTI students interested in telephone interpreting, and provides data for telephone interpreting research.