A Report On The Blackpool International Dance Competition Rehearsal Class Interpreting Project

The "Blackpool Dance Festival" in England, known as the "National Ballroom Dancing Olympic Games," has received growing popularity in recent years in the Chinese dance industry. With more and more European and American top experts coming to China to teach directly, the demand for classroom interpretation continues to rise. The quality of interpretation has a direct bearing on the integration of Chinese Ballroom Dancing into the international community. In December 2015,to prepare for the "Blackpool Dance Festival," Nanjing University of the Arts invited Andre Paramonov and Natalie Paramonov,the world dance champion couple, to hold the choreography and dance rehearsal. The reporter undertook the class interpreting project and received positive feedback from the clients. In the process of this project, the reporter was encountered with two kinds of obstacles—from the perspectives of the interpreting per se and of communication. The former is reflected in four aspects: being unfamiliar with dance knowledge and terminology, the accent barrier, the noisy working environment, and the demand for dance moves to assist interpretation; the latter is concerned with the reporter’s poor sense of cross-cultural mediation, and inexperience with conflicts of interests. Based on personal reflections and drawing upon the experience of outstanding interpreters and previous research, the reporter proposes comprehensive solutions to address the problems. The solutions also fall into two categories. As far as the translation itself is concerned, the interpreter should prepare Ballroom Dancing knowledge and terminology, adapt to the features of Ballroom Dancing interpreting,and practice on interpretation materials of diverse accents. From the perspective of communication, the interpreter should enhance the awareness of cultural mediation and become a skilled interpersonal communicator. The report presents careful data analysis. It will provide assistance to interpreters in art exchange, in particular, choreography interpreting; it will also enrich real-situation data in this field.