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The evaluation criterion for good interpretation has been frequently discussed in the interpreting community and many scholars have proposed their own opinions. For example, Gile’s criteria include fidelity, quality of the voice as well as usage of terminologies, etc; Bao Gang proposed complete and accurate interpretation and fluent delivery; Buhler contended that the evaluation criteria consist of sense consistency. In fact, the criterion such as accurate interpretation, consistency and equivalence can be summarized as “faithfulness”, though different researchers focus on different aspects of faithfulness. Therefore, it can be said that in terms of criterion for evaluating interpretation, “faithfulness” is discussed by researchers most. The Interpretive Theory also has its own understanding towards “faithfulness”.
Amparo Albie, an important scholar of the Paris School, put forward three evaluation criteria for faithfulness in Notion of Faithfulness in Translation (La Notion de Fede’lite’ en Traduction):“In translating, we should be faithful to the author’ intention (le vouloir dire) and be in accordance with the specific manners of expression of the target language and the target reader.” (quoted from Lederer, 2003:69-70)In the following part, these three standards will be introduced one by one.To evaluate whether the interpretation of a certain speech is faithful or not, first of all, we can try to find out whether it is faithful to the intention of the speaker. This criterion is related to the first stage of interpreting—comprehension.Being faithful to the speaker’s intention means that the interpretation should be loyal to what the speaker really intends to express, not mere the mechanical equivalence to the exact words the speaker says. The speaker’s intention is a complicated concept, for on the one hand, the linguistic significations of the words or sentences of the speech sometimes cannot reveal wholly the intention, therefore the interpreter need to infer it on the basis of the given information; on the other, being faithful to the speaker’s intention involves other factors such as the speaker’s style, this is because “sense”, what the speaker wants to convey and what he/she wants others to understand, is a synthesis of language, identity and expression style of the speaker, topic and communicative occasion.For interpreters, word-for-word interpreting sometimes does not necessarily achieve faithfulness, only when they put the speech under the context and cognitive environment and understand the real intention of the speaker can they produce faithful interpretation.This criterion is associated with the third stage of interpreting—re-expression.It is known that different languages have different means of expression, styles and rules. So to be faithful to the target language, interpreters should produce their interpreted version in accordance with the rules of the target language so as to make their re-expression natural and idiomatic; otherwise, they cannot make themselves understood, thus leading to failure of communication between the speaker and listener. Take Chinese and English as an example. English stresses “logic” and such logic is showed in the sentence with conjunctions while the logic in Chinese is seldom expressed explicitly with conjunctions; English sentences are longer and more complicated while Chinese sentences are concise and short; Chinese people prefer to use four-character phrases while the equivalence of such four-character-phrases can seldom be found in English; besides, Chinese people prefer to use active voice most of the time but English people prefer passive voice, etc. Therefore, while interpreting Chinese to English or vice versa, interpreters should express themselves according to the rules, expression manners and style of the target language.Seleskovitch pointed out that to evaluate interpretation, we should also and always take the response of the listener or the audience into consideration. She also stressed that it is necessary to target the language to the expectation of the audience. In other words, through the interpreted version, the listener is able to grasp the sense of the source discourse and react as the listener who speaks the source language does. Meanwhile, the interpretation should be acceptable to the listener, which means it should be natural and intelligible.Moreover, in the re-expression stage, a qualified interpreter should be capable of identifying himself or herself from the response of the audience. This maybe difficult in simultaneous interpreting because interpreters sit in a booth which is often located behind the audience or far away from the audience. But in consecutive interpreting, as interpreters can face the audience, they can judge from the response of the audience directly to see whether or not the information of the source discourse is well received. If not, they should make adjustments or explanations to help them understand.To sum up, to be faithful to sense, interpreters should be faithful to the intended sense of the speech originator, to the target language and to the speech receiver. These three criteria work together indispensably and should all be considered at the same time. If only being faithful to either one or either two of them, faithfulness to sense can never be fully achieved.The speaker is the person who produces the content of the speech or remarks. As the Interpretive Theory holds that “the position a person holds, the political point of view he supports and the profession he practices will determine how he will act at a meeting” (Seleskovitch, 1978:25), factors concerning the speaker can be divided into the followings.Identity can influence the speaker’s utterance, for what he or she says must accord with the identity. On diplomatic occasions, the speaker is usually the spokesman of the government, minister, diplomat,