The Communication Skills Of The Official Language In The Press Conference

Held each year after the “two sessions” of NPC and CPPC, Premier Li’s answers to the questions raised by Chinese and foreign reporters at the press conference are characterized by the wide realm and frequent use of official language. The press conference is a typical formal occasion in foreign affairs and the language used in raising and answering the questions is standardized and politically sensitive.Interpreters need to input and output two utterly different languages featuring different cultures in a relatively short period of time. So, inevitably, many difficulties will arise due to the cultural gap in the course of interpreting, especially in the official language interpreting process. Only through hard training and accumulation can interpreters gain the skills to ensure the quality of interpretation. The goal of this thesis is to sum up the features of official language and to find the way to interpret them through the analysis of the two versions of the interpretation of Premier Li Keqiang’s answers at the two press conferences. These six features include: the frequent use of non-subject sentences, the frequent use of four-letter words, the lack of cohesion between sentences, the frequent use of verbs, the frequent use of idioms and folk language and the frequent use of traditional Chinese cultural elements. In this thesis, through the study of these six features, five consecutive interpretative skills used to interpret official language at press conferences are listed in order to improve the quality of interpretation.