A Survey Of Views On The Role Of Chinese-English And English-Chinese Court Interpreters In China And Its Implications For Improving Court Interpreting

Through a selective review of the literature studying court interpreting and interviews with professionals in fields of the interpreting and the law,the author finds that currently interpreters who are or will practice court interpreting may sometimes feel confused in terms of their identity,role behaviors and role competencies,thus failing to satisfy the growing demand for high-quality court interpreting.Based on the assumption that court interpreting can and should be viewed within the conceptual spectrum of sociology and that each party involved in the process of court interpreting holds similar or different expectations for other parties in the interaction situation,the present thesis sets out to survey the differences and similarities regarding expectations held by users for court interpreters and perceptions held by interpreters from four aspects of the sociological role theory,i.e.identity awareness,role behaviors,role competencies and role development.In addition,the secondary objective of the present thesis is to provide a brief analysis of the survey's implications on role analysis of court interpreters in China so as to fulfill the growing need in the market.The data related to users' expectations and interpreters' self-perceptions are collected through sociological research instrument like interviews and questionnaires.Interviews have been designed for interpreters either with background of professional interpreting training or with experiences in interpreting.Questionnaires have been spread to users,including legal-professionals and non-legal foreigners by means of the Survey Monkey for the English version,and So Jump for the Chinese one.As for the analysis of the data collected,comparative analysis is conducted in a quantitative way.The results of the quantitative comparison between interpreters' views and users' expectations indicate that,currently,in China's court interpreting procedures,users and interpreters hold conflicting views on certain topics,identity awareness in particular,and similar views,especially regarding the topic of role competencies.And to fulfill the secondary objective of the present study,results of the quantitative comparison are employed to point out fields requiring further efforts.All in all,the present thesis is carried out in an empirical way to check the correctness of the assumption that different and similar views exist between interpreters' and court interpreting users' attitudes toward the role of court interpreters.And results of the study verify the accuracy of the assumption.However,limitations do exist in terms of the amount of research subjects,the way in which data are analyzed and the detailed comparison of attitudes within the user group,etc.The limitations require further efforts in the fields of both law and academy.Nevertheless,the present thesis offers its own contribution to the development of court interpreting in China.