Multiple Roles Of Court Interpreters From The Approach Of Participation Framework ——A Case Study Of The Roles Of Interpreters In Chinese Athlete Sun Yang’s Public Hearing

The role of interpreter is an important theme in interpreting studies.Because of the various interpreting settings and contents,interpreters need to play multiple roles in interpreting practices.Court is a constellation with its own characteristics,so the role of the court interpreter is relatively special for facilitating a smooth communication among all parties in court.At present,the domestic studies on the roles of the court interpreter are not sufficient.This thesis analyzes the roles of the court interpreter in the public hearing of Sun Yang’s case held by the Court of Arbitration for Art in November,2019,under Goffman’s “participation framework”.The thesis firstly transcribes the hearing which is about 13 hours,including 4.5 hours’ interpreting,totally more than 50,000 English and Chinese words.Then,based on the “participation framework”,the thesis discusses the roles of the court interpreters as follows:（1）speaker: “animator”,responsible for verbatim interpreting;“author”,responsible for organizing the words without individual emotions;“principal”,responsible for the meaning they convey.（2）listener:“unaddressed recipient”,responsible for the smooth process of the trial;“addressed recipient”,responsible for directly talking to the parties in court and reducing the obstacles and conflicts created by language barriers.This thesis draws the conclusion that: acting as a speaker,court interpreters play the roles of “animator” and “author” faithfully interpreting the source language in most of time,and should avoid expressing personal opinions and emotions;acting as a listener,the role of court interpreters shifts from “unaddressed recipient” to “addressed recipient” featuring that one party in court begins to directly communicate with the court interpreter for eliminating the confusions in interpreting.No matter acting as a speaker or a listener,the role of the court interpreter isn’t single and fixed,and it should be adjusted and shifted according to different circumstances.Furthermore,court interpreters will meet intrarole/interrole conflicts and conflicts between roles and their personalities.Facing these conflicts,court interpreters should choose proper interpreting strategies.All in all,court interpreters should improve professional abilities to deal with all unexpected situations and conflicts,and the society should attach more attention to setting standards and training courses to regulate this occupation so as to better achieve equity and justice of court.