ABSTRACT
The interpreted interaction is a situation par excellence to examine how Chinese and English speakers bring their own discourse-pragmatic norms and notions of intercultural communication to an encounter with a speaker of the other language. Chapter 3 commences with an overview of contemporary understandings of interpreting. This is followed by a discussion of the role(s) of the interpreter and how these reflect requirements of professional norms and the dynamics of a mediated situation. The centrepiece of this chapter is a detailed description of the most common settings that interpreters work in, focusing on Chinese–English language-transfer in these. These settings include: conferences; diplomacy and senior government meetings; media; business meetings; police interviews, lawyer-client consultations and courtroom proceedings; healthcare. Excerpts of data samples containing Chinese–English interpreting are presented for each of these settings to show how interpreters provide inter-lingual transfer. Examining these excerpts we show how interpreters employ their knowledge of intercultural communication and the ways that their interpretations reflect this. We apply the Inter-Culturality Framework as well as other theoretical models to our analysis of mediated events and conclude with a comparative discussion of cultural mediation and interpreting practice.
