The Role Of Telephone Interpreters In The Beijing Multilingual Service Center

Telephone interpreting has emerged as an important form of community interpreting.Interpreters provide services for the primary interlocutors who are not in the same physical location via telecommunication equipment.With bilingual expertise,interpreters play a crucial role in facilitating cross-linguistic and cross-cultural communication.Despite its growing significance,telephone interpreting has received relatively little scholarly attention,and the roles of telephone interpreters remain largely unexplored.Drawing on the participation framework and role theories developed by sociologist Erving Goffman,this thesis examines the role performance and role distance of community telephone interpreters at the Beijing Multilingual Service Center.Analysis of the discourse data and statistical data reveals that interpreters adopt all three speaker roles and two ratified recipient roles during interpreting sessions.Further categorization of speaker roles includes "author-re-teller," "author-explainer,""author-cutter," "principal-responder," "principal-question raiser," "principal-advisor," and"principal-gatekeeper of the participants’ emotion." Role distance is also evident in interpreters’ performances,attributable to the spatial distance inherent in telephone interpreting and the emotional dynamics between participants.Interpreters’ perceptions of their roles and their work experience also contribute to role distance in their performance.Overall,this study sheds light on the important and multifaceted role of telephone interpreters and provides insights into the challenges they face in this demanding and rapidly-evolving field.