A Study On The Role Of Wartime Military Interpreter In Afghanistan War Narrated By English Media

The researches on the role of interpreter have been more than 40 years since the publishing of R.Bruce W.Anderson's Perspectives on the Role of Interpreters in 1976.With the increasing outbreak of conflicts and wars over the past three decades,scholars have begun to pay attention to wartime military interpreter and study their roles.To some extent,the role of wartime military interpreter is obscurely analyzed in existing researches.Researches on the role of interpreters in China began in the early21 st century.Research results are few and far between.Compared with traditional interpreting researches,today's interpreting researches begin to take interpreter as a research object.The theme most talking about in researches of interpreter is the role of interpreter,mainly studying interpreter's subjectivity,objectivity,multiple roles and interpreter's performance on special occasions such as conference,business,and community interpreting.The researches on the role of wartime military interpreter are very few.Professor Mona Baker from University of Manchester has put forward an inspirational way for researching the role of wartime military interpreter: use media coverage which is closely related to wartime military interpreter as research sources to study the role of wartime military interpreter.Media can often get the firsthand material about wartime military interpreter,which has important research value.With the popularity of Internet,media coverage about wartime military interpreter is abundant.These media include online newspapers,radio,video,website and other media forms.With the increasing number of wartime military interpreters in Afghanistan War,more and more media coverage about wartime military interpreter in this context have been published.The study takes the identity of wartime military interpreter in Afghanistan War,wartime interpreters in Afghanistan War,wartime linguists in Afghanistan War etc,as key words to search media coverage about wartime military interpreter in Afghanistan War in English media.It includes a total number of 60 media coverage from the New York Times,the Washington Post,theLos Angeles Times,the U.S.National Public Radio,the BBC,the Guardian,the Telegraph,the Reuters and other media.Time span of collected media coverage starts from 2001 to 2017.Through careful reading and classifying,media coverage is selected to analyze the role of wartime military interpreter in Afghanistan War.Taking media coverage about military interpreter in Afghanistan War as research materials,the study takes the role of wartime military interpreter in Afghanistan War as research object with Mona Baker's narrative theory in sociology and communication theory as theoretical guidance.Other participants' narratives to wartime military interpreter in Afghanistan War and military interpreters' own narratives help to construct the role of wartime military interpreter.It finally comes to a conclusion: wartime military interpreter in Afghanistan War is narrated as victim,friend,traitor,and spy.The study helps to strengthen the visibility of wartime military interpreter,further enhances the identity cognition of wartime military interpreters,and improves people's understanding of the role of wartime military interpreter.The significances of the study are: firstly,researches about the role of wartime military interpreters are few no matter at home or abroad,the writing of the study helps to fill the vacancy.Secondly,few scholars study the role of military interpreter in Afghanistan War since the war just ended in 2016.The study provides novel research perspective and results: wartime military interpreter in Afghanistan War is narrated as victim,friend,traitor,and spy.Next,based on the reliability of media's capability to obtain firsthand information about wartime military interpreters in Afghanistan War,making full use of media coverage to analyze the role of wartime military interpreters has credibility and research value.Finally,the study uses narrative theory from social and communication perspective as theoretical guidance,which makes an attempt to utilize interdisciplinary approach to examine the role of wartime military interpreters.