Information Loss And Its Countermeasures In Consecutive Interpreting From The Perspective Of Functional Theories Of Translation

Interpreting is a wildly used media in international communication. Consecutive Interpreting as one of the ways of interpreting is a trans-cultural communicative activity with timely, strict and challenging features. It is often used in press conference or business negotiation to help two parties communicate. In CI, the major task of the interpreter is the successful transmission of information from the speaker to the listener so as to fulfill the purpose of communication. Faithfulness stands out as the first criterion for interpretation quality. The quality of CI will directly affect the result of an international event. Information loss, one of the standards of the assessment of quality of interpreting, is an inevitable phenomenon occurs both in SI and CI. As the International activities have become increasingly frequent, the improvement of quality of interpreting is necessary. This thesis is an attempted study on information loss in Consecutive Interpreting. Information loss has more than often been regarded as key elements in the assessment of quality in CI. However, in recent years it has been argued by some theoreticians that some strategies chosen by interpreter in a bilingual communication sometimes cause information loss, which indicate the existence of such phenomenon in CI. Therefore, the author of this thesis sets out a look at the phenomena of information loss in CI. To support opinion of the objective existence of information loss in CI, functional theories of translation is introduced to explain why information loss is unavoidable. On practical perspective, an observational study, whose materials are selected form the transcribed recordings of "Premier Wen’s Press Conference2011", is carried out to see how and under what circumstances information loss appeared. Through such a study, the author hopefully manages to offer some pragmatic strategies that are actually very effective CI strategies that should be integrated in the CI practicing.