On The Visibility Of Interpreter Interns In Business Interpreting

Traditionally,interpreters are viewed invisible in the interpreting process.Due to the increasing frequency of interpreting activities and the paradigm shift of interpreting studies,scholars in this field have greatly extended their research perspectives and projects among which interpreters' visibility and role in the interaction process has gained attention especially owing to scholars' academic efforts in liaison interpreting.For a long time,studies on interpreters' visibility and role have been confined to certain liaison interpreting settings,especially on medical interpreting and court interpreting.Business interpreting in its narrow sense is a typical type of liaison interpreting and deserves more attention.Moreover,a study on interpreters' visibility in business interpreting is of practical meaning for being able to point out clearer directions for interpreters to better identify and balance their roles so as to facilitate a cross-linguistic business communication.Building on the results of previous studies and defining the concept and characteristics of business interpreting and the parameters of interpreter's visibility,this thesis analyses six interpreter interns' visibility in an real business interpreting activity.The methods of questionnaire survey,discourse analysis,and interview are adopted respectively to explore these interpreters' visibility and roles in the interaction and their motives behind that.And the thesis found that these interpreter interns were visible and mainly played the role of co-interlocutor and coordinator in the interpreting even though they lack some cognition of interpreters' visibility in concept and prefer to stay neutral as suggested by the interview results.Finally,the thesis discusses the implications of its findings to interpreters training and to the self-positioning and role control of novice interpreters in business interpreting.