Interpreters'Participation Role in Meaning Mediation:a Socio-Pragmatic Study Based on Reports of MTI Students'Business Interpreting Practice
Driven by the epistemological understanding of interpreting as social practice and interaction in a situated activity system,this study aims to deconstruct the interpreters'diversified participation roles as speakers in much under-investigated business setting,and the circumstances when the specific role(s)become salient.Based on the role theory in sociology and meaning theory in pragmatics,this paper analyzes Chinese MTI students'reports on their field business interpreting collected from CNKI.The tentative findings are as follows.When meaning is lost,new meaning is added,or meaning is corrected,interpreters take the principal role,with the highest level of active participation affected by interpreters'role distance,cultural conflicts and formality degree of the situa-tional context.When meaning gets explicated,the level of interpreters'active participation decreases,interpret-ers'author role becomes salient.It usually occurs when there is a lack of planning in the source texts or of corre-spondence in the target language,or when interpreters accentuate core information.When meaning is linguistically represented,the level of active participation further decreases to the lowest and interpreters'animator role be-comes salient.It occurs when the primary interlocutors share background knowledge or have a good command of the target language.Interpreters'inappropriate participation is also found due to their misjudgment.
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