On The Pragmatic Failure In Interpretation From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

Since the Reforming and Opening-up, China has experienced rapid economicdevelopment and has been involved in more and more international communications.As an essential bridge to international communication, interpretation has been playinga much greater role. Interpretation is essentially a process of continuous adaptivelinguistic choice-making. If interpreters do not have a good mastery of the factorsconcerning culture, society, cognition, etc. in communication, they won t be able tomake appropriate linguistic choices. Thus, pragmatic failure occurs and thecommunication may break down.Interpretation, having a greater international standing today, has led to manystudies on it, most of which are done mainly from the perspective of interpretationcharacteristics, skills and training, interpreters qualities, etc.. In terms of research onpragmatic failure, studies are conducted mainly from the perspectives of secondlanguage acquisition, foreign language teaching, etc. and exploration of the causes ofpragmatic failure are made. While most studies are done at a macro-level by takinginto consideration the cross-cultural communication activities as a whole, studies ofcross-cultural communication activities in specific settings, i.e. interpretation, arerarely found. What s more, the studies are mostly conducted under the theoreticalframework of Thomas s Theory of Pragmatic Failure, and consider cultural differenceas the main reason for pragmatic failure in communication. It is acknowledged thatinterpretation is a form of cross cultural communication with dynamic context. Apartfrom cultural difference, interpreters should also take into account the dynamics ofcontext, linguistic structure differences, etc..Belgian linguist Verschueren put forward the notion of Adaptation Theory in1987.According to the theory, whether consciously or unconsciously, language use is aprocess of continuous linguistic choice-making for linguistic or extra-linguisticreasons. It has found applications in several fields such as linguistic strategy,translation, second language acquisition, study on syntax, etc. It had been proven thatAdaptation Theory is strongly enlightening and explanatory in many aspects, but thereare few studies done on pragmatic failure from this perspective. In terms of itsapplication to translation, most of the studies concentrate on translating strategies. However, the research of interpretation from the perspective of Adaptation Theoryneeds to be strengthened.Taking Adaptation Theory as the theoretical support and employing thequalitative research approach, this thesis has analyzed the pragmatic failure at alllevels in interpretation, and discussed the following questions:(1) what are the causesof pragmatic failure in such a form of cross cultural communication with dynamiccontext as interpretation?(2) what are the factors interpreters should adapt to and howto adapt to so as to make proper linguistic choice-making?According to the notions of Adaptation Theory and by means of analysis ofample interpretation examples, conclusions can be drawn as follows:(1) Interpreters failure in adaptation to linguistic and contextual factors results in the pragmatic failurein interpretation.(2) In order to effectively avoid or reduce pragmatic failure in theprocess of interpretation, interpreters need to make adaption to linguistic factors,extra-linguistic factors, and dynamics of linguistic choice by fully taking lexisadaptation, sound adaptation, syntax adaptation and style adaptation, etc. as well aslinguistic context, communicative context (including the physical, social, and mentalworld in communication), and dynamics of context.Finally, the thesis proposes some suggestions to avoid or reduce the pragmaticfailure in interpretation in terms of the improvement of interpreters culturalcompetence and communicative competence (including pragmatic and linguisticcompetence).