An Analysis Of Student Interpreter’s Insufficient And Undue Visibility Consciousness

Liaison interpreting in museums promotes cultural exchanges between China and foreign countries.Its service quality influences foreign visitors‘ travel experience.In the on-site interpreting,interpreters not only deal with intensive information but also take part in communication to promote an interactive atmosphere and bring visitors a better experience.Therefore,they go beyond the role as an invisible language switcher tagged by traditional views but act as a visible co-participant within the interaction.Underpinned by Ren Wen‘s theory about visibility consciousness,the thesis analyzes the student interpreter‘s visibility in a liaison interpreting practice at the Fujian Museum performed by the author for three Philippine students as an effort to find out the yardsticks for visibility.Under visibility consciousness,a liaison interpreter should act as a gate-keeper,a co-interlocutor and a coordinator of discourse within the interaction to facilitate communication.However,through analyzing the selected cases from the task,the author found that the student interpreter sometimes lacked visibility consciousness and sometimes overplayed visibility consciousness,shifting into other roles from the should-be gate-keeper,co-interlocutor,and coordinator.More specifically,the author discovered that on the one hand,under insufficient visibility consciousness,the interpreter acted as an excessively faithful conduit and a passive observer while on the other hand,under undue visibility consciousness,the interpreter was prone to perform as an arbitrator deliberately omitting information,inconsiderate turn creator and impulsive co-interlocutor.These findings shed light on the necessity for student interpreters to enhance their visibility consciousness in real-work practice,preventing physical visibility but mental invisibility and the importance for student interpreters to control their visibility consciousness by making reasonable decisions according to users‘ expectation,task process and facts.Through criticizing the student interpreter‘s performance under insufficient and undue visibility consciousness,the thesis aims to expand the application of the theory about visibility consciousness and provide budding liaison interpreters with some practical suggestions and share insights into associated research in the field of liaison interpreting.