A Report Of Telephone Interpreting Practice For A Chemical Testing Institute

From October to December 2019,the author provided eleven telephone interpretation services for a Chinese chemical testing institute.This institute has been providing chemical testing services for company N for over ten years.Company M,the parent company of company N,which is headquartered in France,needed to qualify the Chinese chemical testing institute as a supplier.To complete the qualification,company M needed to conduct both by-desk and on-site audits of the chemical testing institute.For the by-desk audit,the testing institute should submit the questionnaire and relevant supporting documents required by company M.During this period,Company M and the testing institute held two teleconferences per week,and the author was responsible for the two-way telephone interpretation between Chinese and English.This report chooses four of the eleven telephone interpreting services as the objects,analyzes the difficulties and problems the author faced in the interpreting process,and discusses the corresponding solutions to these difficulties and problems.In the task description of this report,the author focuses on the characteristics of this interpretation task.This task brings a lot of challenges to the author,as it is telephone interpretation and two-way interpretation between Chinese and English.In addition,a foreign speaker has a strong French accent,which increases the difficulty of listening comprehension.During the review of the task,the report focuses on the preparation stage,and also briefly explains Comprehension Equation,the interpreting process and post-interpreting work.In this chapter of task analysis,under the guidance of Gile’s Comprehension Equation,this report shows the solutions for the difficulties the author faced in interpreting: French accent,lack of background knowledge,notesdecoding failure,loss of information and misinterpreting,etc.This report finds that according to Gile ’s Comprehension Equation,interpreters should accumulate extra-language knowledge by learning relevant professional knowledge during preparation and daily practice;enhance knowledge of the language by expanding vocabulary and getting familiar with different accents;improve the ability of analysis and use different interpreting strategies based on speaker’s intention.In this interpretation practice,although the author has encountered great challenges,she has also gained important experience and summarized relevant strategies.The author hopes this report can provide some useful information for other interpreters.