The Defamiliarization Strategies For English Escort Interpretation:a Project Report On Nanjing History And Culture Tours During The Asian Youth Games

The project report aims to explore the application of defamiliarization strategy in escort interpreting based on the reporter’s project on the Nanjing History and Culture Tours during the Asian Youth Games. When interpreting the Chinese introduction to Nanjing Zhonghua City Gate, the City Wall of the Ming Dynasty, Gan’s Courtyard, Jiangning Imperial Silk Manufacturing Museum and the Xingzhi Base, the reporter was confronted with a series of difficulties, mainly involving the interpretation of expressions concerning Chinese history, culture and customs, poems and idioms of ancient Chinese literature, and the interpretation of long and complex sentences. The difficulties resulted mainly from the discrepancies between the two languages. Based on the review of literature and her reflections, the reporter found that defamiliarization strategies may to a great extent help the interpreter out in similar situations, namely, hybridization, amplification and annotation, and analogy. By hybridization, the interpreter hybridizes the source language and target language so as to remain the feature of the source language as well as observing the linguistic rules in the target language. By amplification and annotation, the interpreter complements the related information of the historical people or places so as to make them more alive. Analogy is to imitate the word formation, the structure and the pronunciation of the source language. The report points out that through maintaining the feature of source language with the three methods, foreigners will gain novel experience while the original taste and flavor of the culture and history of the source language can be maintained. Through analyzing the difficulties during the escort interpreting project in detail, the reporter also offers advice to in-service interpreters in the tourism industry and MTI students. The reporter combines the defamiliarization strategies which are often studied in literary translation with escort interpreting. It will enrich the corpus-based analysis and theoretical discussion in interpreting study.