A Study On Pragmatic Failures In Chinese-english Interpretation From The Perspective Of Pragmatics

Chinese-English interpretation as a way of cross-cultural communications hasalready become common today. Traditional studies on C/E interpretation mainly focuson the training of interpreters’ linguistic ability or interpretation skills and strategies.However, interdisciplinary studies on interpretation, which is to say the researchescombine interpretation with linguistics or pragmatics or psychology studies arecomparatively limited. Thus, the author tries to study pragmatic failure in C/Einterpretation from the perspective of pragmatics. The concept of pragmatic failure wasfirst proposed by Thomas in his thesis: Cross-cultural Pragmatic Failure in1983. Hegave the definition of pragmatic failure as “an illocutionary force that cannotunderstand the original utterance”. To C/E interpretation, correct understanding is veryimportant to effective language transformation of interpreter. Thus, the accuratecomprehension of the source language and avoiding pragmatic failure as much aspossible are the key factors to a successful interpretation.The dissertation will introduce the basic concepts, classifications and therelationship between interpretation and pragmatic failure. The author tries to uses theSpeech Act Theory, and the Politeness and Cooperative Principles in pragmatics toanalyze pragmatic failure in interpretation. Therefore find out reasons result inpragmatic failure in interpretation, which mainly are cultural differences, diverse waysof thinking and expressing. Thus, concluding the tentative solutions to pragmatic failurein interpretation. For instances: building cultural awareness in interpreting, enhancingcompetences for interpretation and improving interpretation teaching and etc. Finally,in retrospect of limitations of this dissertation and the valuable references and help forthe future studies relate to this topic.