Mitigate cross—cultural pragmatic failure in interpretation with

Mitigate cross—cultural pragmatic failure in interpretation with

project—based learning

Abstract：Mistakes in interpretation are concerned with not merely poor language

competence but also incapability of smooth cross-cultural communication， which

indicates that interpreters should be more competent in pragmatics consistent to the

cultural models of relevance. The analysis demonstrates the importance of

understanding cross-cultural pragmatics and some implications for teaching，

particularly in the EFL environment. Project-based learning， conforming to the

requirements of personnel training against the background of globalization， can well

serve the goal of developing students’ overall cross-cultural communication

competence in interpretation courses， when culture and its impacts on pragmatic

competence of interpretation are not left out in both the in-class and after-class

activities， but are dealt with in a sensitive and open-minded way.

Key words：cross-cultural pragmatic failure； interpretation teaching； PBL

1 Introduction

The commonness between cultures gives rise to the possibility of smooth

cross-cultural communication， but cultural differences still bring barriers in such

communication. In the process of interpretation in which generally two cultures are

involved， the interpreters， who directly receive and make response to the

information from different cultures， must convey the communicational intention of

the speakers accurately. Otherwise， pragmatic failure would be committed that leads

to that some people who are not familiar with the culture cannot understand the

transferred information.

The theoretical framework of pragmatic failure in cross-cultural communication

was first established by Jenny Thomas in 1983， which has been researched by

Chinese scholars from various aspects， including enumerating words， sentences and

short daily conversations which always bring forth misunderstandings or conflicts

between the two parties involved in communication. The focus involves addressing，

greeting， farewell， apology， praise， taboo and euphemism， etc. Although

interpretation is also closely associated with this topic， teaching methods to mitigate

such failure in interpretation are seldom mentioned in studies. In this paper， the

cross-cultural pragmatic failure in interpretation and a teaching model to avoid such

problem， project-based learning （PBL）， will be analyzed.

2 Cross-cultural pragmatic failure

Pragmatic failure doesn’t mean the mistakes in word choice and sentence

construction， but the utterances used on wrong occasion or in inappropriate way，

disobeying the common practice， which causes communication breakdown [1；

2].Thomas[3] first defined pragmatic failure as inability to recognize the force of the

speaker’s utterance， which means the inability to understand the pragmatic meaning

of what is said in specific context. Then， she distinguished two types of pragmatic

failure， pragma-linguistic failure and socio-pragmatic failure. The former occurs