Title: Interpreters: “Act but not to be Seen” in Chinese-English Conference Interpreting: An Observation Based on “Role Space”

Abstract: Not only is the interpreter’s role a hotly-discussed topic in community interpreting studies, but also the interpreter’s role in conference interpreting inspires considerable interest among scholars and practitioners. Hence with the Chinese government conference interpreting (2019) as research materials, and discourse analysis as a research method, this paper puts the conference interpreter into the “role-space” to observe whether the interpreter acts but not to be seen in conference interpreting. This paper finds that the interpreter in Chinese-English conference interpreting can use discourse markers to demarcate the footing and use hedges to maintain the face in communication; actually, the interpreter does act but not to be seen in Chinese-English conference interpreting.

Keywords: role-space, the interpreter’s role, act but not to be seen

Author: Juan Hu, Associate Professor, School of Foreign Languages, Guizhou Normal University, Guiyang, Guizhou, China.