Lessening Stress Coping Strategies For Liaison Interpreting

This report records the author’s experiences as an interpreter escorting anItalian designer while he supervising the manufacture of mink overcoats which aregoing to be exhibited. The author hopes that this report could be helpful forinterpreters who would take similar interpreting tasks in the future by summarizingthe stress the author encounters and by providing corresponding lessening stresscoping strategies and interpreting strategies.The report contains five parts. First of all, it briefly introduced the backgroundof the task, the clients and the interpreter. The second part is about the interpretingprocess, including the pre-task preparation, the interpreting process accumulationand post-interpreting summary. The post-interpreting summary mainly includes theaccumulation of cultural information and technical terms. The third part describesthe interpreting stress the author encounters and her coping strategies. During theinterpreting process, the author encounters great psychological and physical stress,such as the stress of making mistakes, the stress of suffering abusive language fromthe clients and the stress of hard working environment and long working hours. Byusing the coping strategies, such as seeking help from the on-site experts, improvingemergency response ability, hold on to the spirit of mutual understanding and nevergive up and using proactive self-implication, the author successfully completes thetask.Although the author was under various stress, but she used the proactiveself-implication and found her confidence back. So during the interpreting process,the author uses some interpreting strategies, such as amplification, reconstructionand omission. The report also summarizes assessments from all parties concerned,such as the translation company, the client and the interpreter herself and makes conclusions about the author’s performances and points out the parts she couldimprove on. At last, the author pointed out the limitation of the report and givessome suggestions for liaison interpreters.The author hopes this report will give some inspiration and be a use ofreference for the liaison interpreters who may face great stress during liaisoninterpreting process.