An Interpreting Practice Report On A Negotiation Between An Australian Wine Company And A Chinese Online Retailer

This report is based on one of the author's interpreting practices for an Australian wine company during a business negotiation with a Chinese on-line retailer.For the sake of confidentiality,relative names mentioned in this report,including names of people engaged,companies,wineries,products and brands are all fabricated.The two parties — the Australian wine company,referred to as WW and represented by Mr.Blake,and the Chinese e-commerce company,referred to as XX and represented by Ms.Li and Mr.Dong,participated in this negotiation.And the author,entrusted by WW,is also engaged in the negotiation as an interpreter in the interest of WW.In this report,the author describes the task in detail first and then presents the preparation job she does in the first two chapters.In the third chapter,she describes her interpreting process on the spot and analyzes her performance by presenting challenges and difficulties she encounters during the process,as well as the skills and methods she uses to deal with them.In the fourth chapter,the author makes an evaluation on her performance,including the client's service feedback and the author's self-reflection.Through this task,the author has a new and deep understanding in the roles that an interpreter should play in business negotiation.Therefore,she attaches special importance to this aspect in the self-reflection part,and concluded that an interpreter should also be a helper,a matchmaker,and an extinguisher.Finally,the author summarizes the major content of the report.Going through papers on this topic,the author finds that most of them try to explain business interpreting from the perspective of researchers or scholars,rather than from that of practitioners,and that interpreting practice reports on business negotiation are relatively rare compared with those on other topics.Therefore,to some extent,this paper has some advantages in this aspect.What is more,as a student majoring interpreting,the author can combine theories and practices together easily.The author thus hopes to provide some hints or lesson for interpreters engaging in business negotiation and achieve self-improvement in the process of self-evaluation.