Application Of The Cooperative Principle To Interpreting In International Business Negociation—A Comparative Study

With the accelerating process of economic globalization,business exchanges between China and western countries have become increasingly frequent.As an indispensable means of building cross-cultural business cooperation,international business negotiation has become the cornerstone of commercial ties between country and country.Interpreters are bridges connecting negotiating parties in international business.They effectively guarantee the smooth implementation of the negotiation process.Interpreters are not only expected to transfer information for negotiators,but also to facilitate the negotiation process and prevent conflicts.They help negotiators achieve the best outcome with their irreplaceable contribution.The special requirements of international business negotiation demand highly skilled interpreters and make the research on interpreting in international business negotiation(IIBN)very important.The Cooperative Principle put forward by Herbert Grice is a significant research finding in the field of pragmatics.It raised a set of fundamental rules observed by communicators to facilitate conversational communication,which are the Cooperative Principle and its four maxims.However,in the process of international business communication,given the strategic requirements of negotiation,the negotiating parties would consciously choose to violate the Cooperative Principle while also try to maintain a cooperative relationship.This demands interpreters to make judgments and take actions to tackle all kinds of situations in the negotiation process.They make the negotiators’ communication more cooperative,but also remain faithful to the tactics adopted in negotiation.This study adopts a comparative approach,using a controlled experiment of a highly realistic role-play simulation to observe,record and analyze the differences between the performances of experienced professional interpreters and inexperienced amateur interpreters within the same specific context.And a detailed comparative analysis is presented in relation to the four maxims.This study not only investigates the effectiveness of applying the Cooperative Principle to international business negotiation,but also strives to find out exactly how the four maxims can be respectively applied in order to help interpreters adjust their behavior and facilitate the negotiation process to reach a cooperative agreement.