| With the development of society and economy, exchanges and communicationsbetween countries are becoming a necessity. The world is becoming a “globalvillage.” In China, now that we have adopted the reform and opening-up policy formore than30years, the country is playing a more and more important role on theworld stage. China has been extending her close contacts with the rest of the world inthe fields of economics, politics, technology, culture, environment protection and soon. These efforts can be best illustrated through the significant events like China’sentry into the WTO in2001, the Beijing Olympics and Shanghai World Expo. Allthese events demonstrated that the level of China’s engagement in world affairs hasrisen to a new height. Under these circumstances, more and more methods are used tocommunicate with other countries. Among them, Press conference is one of the mostdirect ways to explain the policies and promote the status of China. It is by pressconference that Chinese government can win general acclaim from the internationalworld as well as the general public from within the country. Usually, in pressconferences held by Chinese government, interpreting service is provided to mediatethe communication between the addressors and the audience which include the massmedia reporters and the public. Owing to the importance of the press conference,increasing emphasis has been placed on it. PCI, standing for Press ConferenceInterpreting, provides a new researching topic for linguists around the world.Interpreting is an old human practice; its appearance is earlier than the translation.In many Indo-European languages, the concept of interpreting is expressed by wordswhose etymology is largely autonomous from that of（written）translation.(FranzPochhacker,2010:9). There are many different definitions of Interpreting. Here, theauthor would like to use one which is considered as the most closely definition to thethesis. It was given by the associate professor of the University of Vienna-FranzPochhacker; he has been working as a conference and media interpreter for many years. Interpreting could be formulated as:Interpreting is a form of translation in which the first and final rendition inanother language is produced on the basis of a one-time presentation of an utterancein a source language.(Franz Pochhacker,2010:11)Interpretive Theory (also called the Theory of Sense abbreviated to IT,) which wasestablished by Danica Seleskovitch, who is one of the most important theories oninterpreting. The core of this theory is sense. Interpreting school holds that the processof interpreting is to interpret the sense and a communicative activity. It contends thatthe natures of interpreting are to interpret the non-verbal sense of discourse ratherthan the linguistic meaning.In Oxford Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary, press conference isdefined as: interview given to journalists in order to announce a decision, anachievement, etc. In this thesis, the press conference is defined in a narrow sense as aninterview held by a government ministry or an organization publicly to deliver thecountry’s policies and important issues and affairs, to answer journalist’s questions, toexplain the Party’s and government`s opinions, stance and attitudes, to introduce howthe country is going and to provide with news and information.With the high speed development of China, press conference is playing a moreand more vital role. Government officials use it as a channel to release officialdecisions, truth of events, etc. Through exchange with the mass media, governmentcan promote their work quality and improve their images. In recent years, the centralgovernment and many government departments have actively make use of the pressconference to realize news. In the spring of2003, the “SARS” epidemic was serious.The Sanitation Ministry held the press conference everyday to report the latest“SARS” information home and abroad. After the disastrous earthquake in Wenchuanon May12th,2008, press conference was held every day to inform the masses inChina and the world of the situation in the earthquake-affected areas. The informationincluded the latest casualty number, the number of the rescued people, the weathersituation and the donation offered and some other necessary information.Every spring in China, there are two conferences of vital importance called National People’s Congress (NPC) and Chinese People’s Political ConsultativeConference (CPPCC). The press conferences of the NPC and the CPPCC are held bythe Foreign Ministry and the State Council Information Office most of the time. Likethe ordinary press conferences, the speaker provides the new policy information,answer questions of foreign and China journalists. As for the NPC and the CPPCCpress conferences, they are important supplement of the work report of governmentgiven by the Premier, through which the people home and abroad can have a betterunderstanding and a clearer view and analyze the status quo of China.As China is becoming a more and more influential country and drawing lots ofattention in the world in recent decades。The press conferences of these two sessionsmake many foreign journalists come to cover them. Press conference interpreting(PCI) becomes a vital and the only channel for the foreign journalists who can notspeak Chinese.On international press conferences, there are usually two kinds of interpretingmodes: simultaneous interpreting and consecutive interpreting. The former one is akind of interpreting that “the interpreter listens to the beginning of speech and thenbegins to interpret while the speech continues, carrying on throughout the speech, tofinish almost at the same time as the original. The interpreter is thus speakingsimultaneously to the original, hence again the name.”(Jones,1998) In simultaneousinterpreting, the interpreter does not take many notes and just follow the speaker’sspeed. As long as the speaker finishes his speech, the interpreter’s interpreting alsonearly comes to the end. The latter one-the consecutive interpreting means “theinterpreter listens to the totality of a speaker’s comments, or at least a significantpassage, and then reconstitutes the speech with the help of notes taken while listening;the interpreter is thus speaking consecutively to the original speaker, hence thename.”(Jones,1998) In this kind of interpreting, the length of the speech segment isnot fixed, sometimes three minutes, sometimes even longer. The interpreter has totake notes during the process of listening to the speech. The interpreting of the NPCand the CPPCC press conferences are simultaneous.Here to sum up, for this thesis, the author would like to give a definition of press conference interpreting like this: a kind of simultaneous interpreting used in thegovernment press conferences, in which the Chinese-English interpreting takes thedominating place.Through a thorough research on the topic of interpreting on CNKI, the mostextensive academic online database in China, the author finds that although manyarticles focus on interpreting theories, training and criteria published; there are fewerarticles on PCI, let alone using the IT to explore it.The author of this paper will take IT as the theoretical basis to figure out thefeatures and principles of PCI, the mechanism through which the whole level aninterpreter influences the process of PCI, and the main strategies used in the PCI. |
PDF Full Text Request