Research on C-E Emergency Interpreting Service for the Immigrant Elderly Groups With Hearing Impairment in China

Abstract

The Disaster Prevention Guideline for hearing-impaired groups, issued by the World Federation of the Deaf and the International Sign Language Translation Association, aims to help hearing-impaired groups to get accurate, timely information in the event of disasters or other emergency situations. In order to provide feasible interpreting strategies for immigrant elderly groups with hearing impairment, this study employs the corpus statistics method to analyze this guideline based on the Emergentist Model of Pragmatics. The results of this study demonstrate that the elderly can be divided into mild, moderate, and severe groups in information vulnerability. Therefore, this article puts forward corresponding interpreting strategies for them. For mild groups, interpreters can commonly use positive words, focusing on short sentences. For moderate groups, interpreters can usually use positive words, simple sentences, loud voices and gestures. For severe groups, interpreters should explain and retell loudly close to their ears by positive words with low loading significance, supplementing information by body movements. All of these strategies attempt to accurately convey emergency information to these groups and reduce their harm in emergency events. It is hoped that this can promote the research of emergency interpreting services in China.