Diplomatic Hedge Interpreting-A Semantic And Commnicative Approach

This thesis is a preliminary study on diplomatic hedge interpreting in the perspective of Peter Newmark's semantic and communicative translation theory. Diplomatic interpreting is an important subcategory of interpretation for its success concerns with the image of a country and the dignity of a nation. Previous studies of diplomatic interpreting mainly focus on the general rather than specific analysis of its working mechanism, coping strategies, etc. However, this paper takes a tiny yet significant phenomenon of interpreting in diplomatic language—diplomatic hedges—as subject matter and tries to find out most appropriate ways to transfer their subtle meaning. Since diplomatic hedges exist as a result of linguistic phenomenon and pragmatic strategies, Peter Newmark's semantic and communicative translation methods seem to present us with the appropriate solution.This paper carries out the study on diplomatic hedge interpreting in four main parts. The introduction presents the necessity and layout of the whole thesis. In Chapter one, the author makes a review of the previous researches on hedges, diplomatic interpreting, semantic and communicative interpreting. Then she goes on to elaborate the definition of diplomatic hedges, the reason of their existence and some common coping tactics in interpreting. Chapter three focus on the study of semantic and communicative translation theory and why they are applied in this study. Chapter four tries to find out which is the most appropriate method in diplomatic hedge interpreting with real cases taken from press conferences, speeches at home and abroad. At last, the author comes to a conclusion of this thesis and points out that more studies need to be done.