Page 256 - Handbooks of Applied Linguistics Communication Competence Language and Communication Problems Practical Solutions

234 Helen Spencer-Oatey and Jianyu Xing

brief and that he interfered too much with the proceedings. They were unsure
whether he was getting their message across clearly, either because of his lan-
guage skills or else because he was afraid of offending the British company that
was employing him and so did not speak clearly. The British staff were equally
dissatisfied with the interpreter and had similar types of complaints. They com-
mented that many of the interpretations were shorter than the original utter-
ances, that he failed to interpret when they expected him to do so (and when
their body language signalled that an interpretation was needed and expected),
and that he seemed to act as an active participant rather than as a mediator be-
tween the primary interlocutors. The visit as a whole was highly problematic for
everyone, and both the British and the Chinese felt that the interpreter’s behav-
iour and performance contributed significantly to these problems. He ignored
Chinese conventions when he had no need to (when he stopped the Chinese
delegation leader from giving a return speech), and he avoided conveying sen-
sitive information (perhaps in an attempt to maintain harmony – supposedly a
highly valued Chinese principle) when both British and Chinese primary inter-
locutors wanted him to convey the visitors’ request clearly.

4. Concluding comments

The examples in this paper illustrate the very close interconnections between
language and culture. They demonstrate the ways in which interpreters are
active participants of an interaction, and how they exert influence on the devel-
opment of the discourse. Interpreters have an extremely difficult task balancing
accuracy and completeness on the one hand, with a range of cultural consider-
ations on the other. We do not attempt to offer ‘solutions’ or practical advice for
dealing with these matters; that would be too simplistic. However, we do call for
more research and analysis to be carried out into this complex area, and we
highlight the risk of using untrained interpreters for such a challenging task.

Transcription conventions

(.) Pauses of less than one second
(3) Pauses of the length indicated
= Latching
(??) Unintelligible speech
Word word Words originally spoken in Chinese and translated into English by
the authors