Communication Barriers Caused By Cultural Differencesand Coping Strategies In Escort Interpreting

As the successful hosting of2008Beijing Olympic Games and2010World Expo inShanghai, more and more international events will be held in China. Many people fromdifferent nations speaking different languages are coming to China, thus competent escortinterpreters are in great demand.The primary purpose of this thesis is to analyze the important role of interculturalfactors in escort interpreting and to propose appropriate interpreting strategies so as toachieve intercultural communication effectively. Then based on her personal experience asan escort interpreter at the2nd Ordos International Nadam Fair and her familiarity towardsMongolian culture, the author offers effective strategies and tactics aiming at solving specialintercultural problems when interpreting Mongolian cultural images in the Inner MongoliaAutonomous Region.This thesis includes the following five parts. In Chapter One, this thesis overviews thegeneral information of this interpreting, the preparation and some related backgrounds of theevent. Chapter Two is the literature review part, which introduces the definitions andcharacteristics of interpreting and escort interpreting. This part also includes the relationshipbetween language and culture, the relationship between interpreting and culture, importanceof cross-cultural awareness to escort interpreter and theories concerning with interpretingcultural elements. Chapter Three introduces the basic situation of Inner MongoliaAutonomous Region and generalizes the unique Mongolian cultural differences among Hannation and Western cultures. Chapter Four discusses the coping strategies to overcomecultural obstacles in the process of escort interpretation. The theories that used in this thesisin dealing with cultural differences are foreignizaition and domestication. There are fivestrategies: free interpreting, transliteration, literal interpreting, converting cultural images,holistic interpreting. At last, the author proposes three advices for escort interpreters tocultivate their cross-cultural awareness by improving the study of foreign culture, the studyof mother culture and cultural comparison.