A Report On Interpreting For The1st Shandong-South Australia Cooperation And Development Forum

With the global economic integration approaching, especially after China’s accession into the WTO, there have been more frequent exchanges with other countries in such areas as politics, economics, culture, sports and commerce. Interpretation is playing a bigger role at both formal and informal conferences. As we enter into the21st century, interpretation studies have registered a cross-disciplinary trend of comprehensive researches with findings of other subjects.Relevance theory put forward by Sperber and Wilson researches on the communication process of human beings from a cognitive point of view. The theory argues that communication is an ostensive-inferential process based on cognitive environment and is consistent with the principle of optimal relevance. Within the framework of the theory, interpretation, which is regarded as a cross-national and cross-cultural communication activity, entails two ostensive-inferential processes relating to the speaker, the interpreter and the hearer. In order to understand and represent the informative intention of the speaker, the interpreter should adopt appropriate interpreting strategies, combine underlying information with the cognitive environment and infer the real communicative intention of the speaker.This report is based on the author’s interpreting practice in the1st Shandong-South Australia Cooperation and Development Forum. It gives a preliminary study on interpreting techniques as applied in specific contexts from the perspective of relevance theory. Following the principle of optimal relevance, the report aims to exemplify the application of relevance theory in interpretation, propose appropriate interpretating strategies in according contexts, and thus help interpreters better grasp the nature of interpretation, make the best choice of words and guide the future interpreting practices.