Interpreting Culture-loaded Expressions From The Perspective Of The Interpretive Theory Of Translation

With the rapid development of globalization and trade liberalization, culturalexchanges between China and the rest of the world have been dramatically increased.Recent years have also witnessed the increasingly significant role interpretation playsin intercultural communication. Culture-loaded expressions, which are rich in culturalconnotations and meanings, pose a great challenge to interpreters in their interpretingpractices and directly affect the ultimate interpreting quality. This thesis choosesculture-loaded expressions as a research object to further analyze the nature ofculture-loaded words and related coping strategies.There are multiple theories put forward by researchers to analyze and optimizethe interpretation of culture-loaded expressions, among which the Interpretive Theoryof translation is an effective framework in studying this issue. The Interpretive Theoryof Translation, proposed by Seleskovitch and Lederer of Paris School, is differentfrom traditional interpreting theories which only divide the process of interpretinginto two phases. The Interpretive Theory argues that there are three phases ofinterpreting activity, namely, comprehension, deverbalization and re-expression. Thistheory views deverbalization and the capture of sense as an integral part ofinterpreting process. This thesis introduces the history of the Interpretive Theory ofTranslation, and elaborates on its main contents and ideas. Then, cultural concepts,together with research achievements of cultural studies and culture-loadedexpressions in the past are introduced to analyze the possibility of applying theInterpretive Theory to the interpreting of culture-loaded words and phrases.Afterwards, coping strategies are combined with cases from on-site interpretingpractices to shed light on interpreters’ working activities. In the end, limitations ofusing the Interpretive Theory to interpret culture-loaded expressions are summarizedand a conclusion is finally drawn. This thesis concludes that the interpreter’smanagement of culture-loaded expressions directly affects the interpreting quality.The practice of using the Interpretive Theory to extract sense from expressions withcultural indications and re-express the meanings in target language is proved to be an effective as well as a helpful method. It not only reduces the interpreter’s workload,but also facilitates audience’s understanding, which is mutually reciprocal. To sum up,it is a meaningful and advisable attempt to study the interpretation of culture-loadedexpressions from the perspective of the Interpretive Theory of Translation.