An Analysis Of The Interpreting Strategies For Chinese Ancient Verses At Conference Interpretation

As an international language, the development of English interpreting plays animportant role in the international communication. More and more researchers begin tostudy the theories and the practices of English interpreting, and at the same time, more andmore countries begin to establish English interpretation department to respond to the needsof society. Interpretation is a communicative activity, and interpreter is a bridge to help thedifferent language speakers to understand each other. At conference interpretation, it isparticularly important for interpreters to set up not only the contact with speakers but alsothe contact with listeners, and the only purpose is to convey the speaker’s information tothe listeners. It commands that the interpreters understand the original language, transformthe original language information, and then convey it in a short time. During the conference,the speaker’s different language habits would bring different difficulties to interpreters.Premier Wen Jiabao, for an example, who is called “the poem premier”, is willing to quoteverses in the press conference to express his sincere affection and his firm faith.As China’s national culture heritage, Chinese ancient verses have permanent value andkeep their value during thousands years, and are very popular in Chinese people. Chineseancient verses have a long history, the genre of poems is multiplied, and the works arenumerous. In Chinese ancient society, verse is one of the most important forms of culturalexchange. Verse also form, different styles: passionate, wide and bold and unconstrained,or beautiful, graceful and restrained, and scholars usually use verses to express feelings.. Ina poem, the sentence is compact and short, the melody is harmonious, and the meaning isdeep. With the passage of changing time, Chinese language turns into the Bai Hua period,and the linguistic forms of verses are also changed into colloquial style, which couldexpress feelings more directly and clearly. In modern society, with the increasingly frequentinternational exchanges, the Chinese and western cultural exchange is deepening day byday. Five thousand years of cultural heritage greatly attracted foreign scholars. More andmore countries in the world begin to found Chinese courses, and "china-craze" has becomethe world’s cultural trend. Especially Chinese ancient verses, whose unique charm has become the researching objects of western scholars and academics. However, manyresearches and studies are mainly concerned with translation, and the internationalcommunity has a lot of Chinese ancient verses about the translation research material. Inthe interpretation of ancient verses our research is rare. In today’s culture globalization,written translation has been far from meeting the language communication demand, and theinterpretation gets more and more attention. At the same time, professional interpretershave also are not in shortage. Interpreting work is casual, so interpreters must understandthe information of original language and transmit it in a short time. So it is more difficultthan written translation. The differences of language and culture usually cause greatobstacles and difficulties in interpreting process, especially in Chinese ancient versesinterpreting.In this paper, the author dedicates to the analysis and study of the strategies forChinese ancient verses interpreting in conference interpretation, with a purpose to be ableto fill in blanks in the research of Chinese ancient verses interpretation and to helpinterpreters to have better and more accurate, more complete expression of the meaning andartistic conception of the Chinese ancient verses. Through reading the articles and booksabout the Chinese ancient verses, written translation and interpretation, collecting thepoems quoted by Premier Wen Jiabao in NPC and CPPCC sessions from2003to2010, andaccording to the Interpretive Theory, the author analyzes the principles of Chinese ancientverses interpreting at conference interpretation:"understanding","analysis", and“re-expression".“Understanding” here means not only to understand words but also theideas that the speaker wants to express and the interpreter has to interpret.“Analyzing”means an interpret proceeds to produce an analysis of speech.“Re-expression” is a stageafter “understanding” and “analyzing”. In the re-expression stage of a conferenceinterpretation, the first thing for an interpreter to know that s/he is a public speaker who hasto establish a contact between speaker and listeners.The author also analyzes three interpreting levels of Interpretive Theory:"lexicallevel","sentence level", and "discourse level"."Lexical level" means word-to-wordinterpreting, which only “renders the primary meaning of the word; the massage would not comethrough clearly and would be little short of incomprehensible”(Seleskovitch1978a:8).“Sentence level” means sentence interpreting, which is to interpret without context andcommunicative environment and “discourse level” means discourse interpreting, whichcombines with the linguistic knowledge and cognitive baggage. According to theInterpretive Theory, the author points out three interpreting processes:“comprehension",“deverbalization", and “reformulation". In the process of “comprehension ", interpretersmust hear the source language clearly first, and then analyzes and comprehends the senseand the content of the discourse.“Deverbalization” is a process between the comprehensionof source language and the reformulation in target language. In this stage, interpreters mustforget the language structure at once for remembering the sense and content of thespeaker’s, which are the production of cognition and emotive sense. And “reformulation” isa process of creating a new sentence by using another language signs which could expressthe complete content of source language and be easy to be understood. Generally, accordingto Interpreter Theory, translation is not a single decoding process of source languageshifting to target language, but a dynamic process of the comprehension re-expressing.Combined with the characteristics of Chinese ancient verses, the author analyzes andsummarizes seven strategies for Chinese ancient verses interpreting at conferenceinterpretation from the linguistics level and non-linguistics level. In linguistics level, theinterpreting strategies are “semantic explanation” and “sentence restructuring”. Innon-linguistics level, the strategies are “literal interpreting”,“general equivalence”,“freeinterpreting”,“contextual interpreting” and “compression”.According to the Interpretive Theory, the author recognizes that there are also somerestricting factors in Chinese ancient verses interpreting. The author separates theserestricting factors into subjective and objective aspects. The former includes the “linguisticknowledge”,“cognitive baggage” and “cognitive context” and the latter includes listeners,speakers and others.