Feifei Wei
Thesis title: Interpreting Culture-specific Items in a Museum: An Exploratory, Multimodal Study
A museum is a multimodal space that attracts visitors from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds to learn, appreciate and interact with displayed objects and artefacts full of historical, cultural, scientific or artistic values.
When museum guides introduce exhibits to international visitors with different cultural backgrounds, languages, values, habits and behaviours, interpreters play an important role in conveying the narratives and cultural meanings behind these artefacts.
The unique feature of museum interpreting is that interpreters not only interact with museum guides and visitors, but also interact with the multimodal space of museums, including sound, image, and objects. Previous studies on the role of an interpreter focus on institutional settings such as medical, legal, and educational settings, while the role of an interpreter in intercultural communication in museums remains unexplored.
To fill the research gap, this project aims to explore the role of interpreters in museums by investigating the ways interpreters convey culture-specific items (CSIs) to visitors from different cultural and language backgrounds. Drawing on multimodal analysis, this study examines authentic museum interpreting at the Inner Mongolia Museum in Hohhot, China, using audio and video recordings and retrospective interviews with interpreters.
This research contributes to interpreting studies by extending existing work on interpreter roles to the museum setting. It also sheds light on how interpreters employ multimodal resources to convey culture-specific items and facilitate cultural understanding among international visitors.
Supervisory team
- Dr Jade Du, School of Modern Languages, Newcastle University
- Dr Ya-Yun Chen, School of Modern Languages, Newcastle University
Academic Background
- MA in Translation and Interpreting, Inner Mongolia University
- BA in Horticulture, Inner Mongolia Agricultural University