Factors In Assessment Of Faithfulness In Escort Interpreting

In today's world, cross-cultural communication is becoming more and more prosperous, with interpreting playing an important role. As a most popular and wide-ranged type of interpreting, escort interpreting should be paid enough attention to. However, present studies focus on consecutive and simultaneous conference interpreting, leaving very little attention to escort interpreting. With its dynamism and flexibility, it is difficult to carry out quality assessment on escort interpreting. Based on quality assessment models of conference interpreting and her own practical experience, the author holds that like conference interpreting, faithfulness can be considered as the most important parameter of quality assessment in escort interpreting. In escort interpreting, faithfulness is affected by kinds of factors such as listening and memory limitations, untranslatability of the original speech, and cultural barriers. Being entitled to more flexibility than conference interpreters, escort interpreters usually employ the strategy of"adaptation"to facilitate the communication. On one hand, adaptation makes it easier to convey the intention of the original speaker and hurdle the obstacles for communication; on the other hand, improper adaptation can damage the faithfulness of interpreted speech.The present paper falls into five chapters. The first part is an introduction of the need for study and the overall structure of the thesis. Types of interpreting, especially escort interpreting and its characteristics are described. The following chapter gives a review of the relevant theoretical and empirical studies in the field of assessment of interpreting, and introduces quality assessment models that this thesis is based on. Chapter three offers an insight in the importance of faithfulness in quality assessment of interpreting. Chapter four is about the process of escort interpreting and its obstacles to faithfulness, including listening obstacles, memory limitation, untranslatability of original language and cultural barriers. Chapter five introduces"adaptation", a method for escort interpreters, and then discusses its relationship with faithfulness and quality assessment of escort interpreting. The last part is a conclusion, which summarizes the major findings, points out limitations and proposes suggestions for future research.