An Analytic Study Of Cultural Elements In Interpretation From The Adaptation Perspective

As globalization is connecting more and more people from different culturestogether, cultural barriers are posing obstacles to intercultural communication aroundthe world, setting higher standards for intercultural interpreters. Verschueren’sAdaptation Theory, while contributing a lot to the study of pragmatics, is sheddingnew lights on interpreting studies by providing new research perspectives, thusplaying a positive guiding role in this field. Therefore, in this thesis, an analytic studyof cultural elements in interpretation from the adaptation perspective is conducted,aiming to find out the various interpreting difficulties caused by cultural barriersduring intercultural interpretation and their corresponding coping strategies.This thesis can be mainly divided into three parts. The first part is a general viewof interpretation and Verschueren’s Adaptation Theory. Through contrastive analysisof the characteristics of interpretation and adaptation, it is found that the similaritybetween these two things lies in the fact that interpretation, like adaptation, is also adynamic process during which the interpreter has to make continuous choices toachieve adaptation to contextual correlates and structural objects, thus contributing tothe point that the process of interpretation is also a process of adaptation. The secondpart first studies the interpreting difficulties caused by four major cultural barriersduring intercultural interpretation, and then by reflecting on previous analysis in thefirst part, gets to the conclusion that cultural adaptation is the fundamental solution toall the difficulties above. In the third part, through example analyses, the authorpresents detailedly the specific methods of cultural adaptation to cope with thosedifficulties and then goes further to study the limitations of cultural adaptation ininterpretation.To sum up, cultural adaptation can be regarded as the fundamental solution to allinterpreting difficulties caused by cultural barriers during intercultural interpretation.Therefore, to achieve ideal communicative effects in interpretation, the interpretershould make great efforts to enhance cultural awareness and enrich culturalknowledge, and conduct cultural adaptation when it is needed.