A Practice Report On Liaison Interpreting For China-Ethiopia Conference From The Perspective Of The Cooperative Principle

This thesis is a practice report based on the liaison interpreting of a meeting entitled “China-Ethiopia Conference”.This is a working group meeting between the documentary shooting team of Jilin TV Station and Ethiopian News Agency.The documentary which is going to be shot in Ethiopia focuses on four aspects including a shared community of life,affections and friendship,win-win cooperation and culture for the sake of demonstrating the brotherhood and common development between China and Ethiopia.This meeting features unambiguous content,characteristic cultural traits of Africa,and speakers with distinct backgrounds and accents.The cooperative principle was put forward by H.P.Grice,a distinguished American philosopher of language,at his speech in Harvard University in 1967.He advocated that during the process of people’s communication,it seems that speakers comply with a certain principle so as to complete their communication in an effective manner.To be specific,the principle identified by the philosopher is composed of the quantity maxim,the quality maxim,the relation maxim,and the manner maxim.The quantity maxim requires that the information contained in dialogues should meet the needs of communication appropriately.The quality maxim demands that the communication carried out between two sides should be based on solid facts and authenticity.The relation maxim requests for the relevance of topics in communication.The manner maxim asks for a dialogue proceeded in a clear and ordered fashion.At the beginning,the principle is mainly applied to daily talks and exchanges,however,many scholars have found that the cooperative principle can be also used as guidance for interpretation.In this thesis,the author tries to explore the role played by the cooperative principle in liaison interpreting.At first,the author describes the interpreting task,evaluates the on-task performance and conducts self-evaluation based on feedback from clients.Then the thesis analyses the content of meeting and difficulties in author’s practice as an interpreter for both Jilin TV Station and Ethiopian News Agency,and the on-site response is also elaborated.In addition,the application of the cooperative principle is illustrated in a detailed way utilizing the liaison interpreting as an example.Meanwhile,the author also finds out the limitations of the cooperative principle to guide the liaison interpreting and tries to summarize the traits of Ethiopian speakers who speak English with accent.In a nutshell,the author analyses the application of the cooperative principle and its four maxims in her practice of a working group meeting between Jilin TV Station and Ethiopian News Agency,and carries out analysis of both the practicability and limitation of the principle when applied to liaison interpreting.At the same time,the author brings forward possible solutions to problems exposed in her interpreting of the meeting,including the accent of Ethiopian main speaker,the lack of background knowledge of the Ethiopia,the involuntary violation of the cooperative principle and the like.The author presents the thesis in the hope of that it will enable more interpreters to be aware of the significance of the cooperative principle in liaison interpreting and that it will be of use to other interpreters of meetings related to Ethiopian speakers.