A Study Of Interpretation Of Press Conference From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

As people actively participate in the political and democratic life, the annual NPC and CPPCC sessions have attracted great attention from all over the world. As the highlight during the two sessions, Premier Press Conference is no doubt a simple and direct chronicle of Chinese political, economic and social development. Recently, Premier Wen’s answers at the press conference have become a hotspot to the public. Besides, due to her accurate interpretation and appropriate mastering of cultural connotation, subtle emotion and Chinese characteristics between the lines of Premier Wen’s speech, Ms.Zhang Lu’s interpretation has also been highly appreciated and well received by netizens as a model of research and learning.Owing to the limited researches on the interpretation of press conference, and what’s more because such researches are attributed to generalized interpretation strategies and methods from the perspectives of the Interpretive Theory, Functional Theory and Cultural Translation and so on, the author will take Verschueren’s Adaptation Theory to analyze the interpretation at Premier Press Conferences in recent two years to see how to adapt in the course of interpretation in order to convey the cultural connotation, emotive involvement, and contents with Chinese characteristics.This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter one briefly introduces the research background, research objectives and questions, research significance as well as the outline of the present thesis. Chapter two provides a literature review of interpretation at home and abroad and also sketches out a general picture of the previous studies. In chapter three, the author provides original and related concepts of Vershueren’s Adaptation Theory as theoretical framework to pave the way for the case study in detail. Chapter four, as the main part of the thesis, makes a brief introduction to the press conference and the requirement of interpreters, and then summarizes the features of content and language of interpretation. Based on the case study, the author applies the theory to the choosing and adapting process of the interpretation of Premier Press Conference from the perspectives of linguistic context and communicative context. Chapter five is the conclusion. It concludes that Adaptation Theory has a huge effect on press conference interpretation. In this chapter, some limitations of the study and suggestions for the further research are also put forward.Through the study, it follows that Adaptation Theory provides a strong theoretical support with high explanatory power for the interpretation of press conference. Zhang Lu’successful interpretation lies in the full understanding of Premier Wen’s language and the proper adaptation, considering the cognitive and receptive habits of reporters, to the language cohesion and sequencing at the linguistic level as well as to the communicative context related to the physical, mental and social world.Finally, due to the limitedness of time and author’s cognition, the study still has some limitations. The author hopes to make an overall and deep study in different press conference interpretation of emotion and culture for further research on the application of Adaptation Theory.