On The Methods For Government Press Conference Interpreting From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

Government press conferences convened during the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference in March every year present good opportunities to deepen the understanding between China and the rest of the world through a direct exchange way—questioning and answering. During the process, a quality consecutive interpreting constitutes an important guarantee;however, study in this regard hasn’t received enough attention and the existing research is not that comprehensive.The press conference conducted by Premier Li Keqiang after the conclusion of two sessions is very representative and a study on the press conference interpreting is of great significance as it can serve as a model for the practice and study of other government press conference interpreting.The Skopos Theory, the core of German functionalist approach, is a translation theory model developed by Hans Vermeer, a German translation theorist.It focuses on the purposes during the translation process, and believes that the translation process depends on the translation purposes.From the perspective of the Skopos Theory, interpreting is a purposeful human activity and government press conference interpreting (GPCI for short), as a specific form of interpreting, has its own particular purposes,such as, stating national policies and positions, protecting national interests,building government or personal images, addressing people’s concerns, guiding public opinions and etc..Therefore,this thesis, drawing upon Skopos Theory, comparatively and comprehensively studies GPCI by taking the consecutive interpreting of2013Li Keqiang’s press conference as an example and summarizes the classic interpreting methods adopted to realize the purposes.Based on the characteristics of language and contents of2013Li Keqiang’s press conference, this thesis divides the original utterance into six sub-categories and comes up with the corresponding interpreting methods, namely, integration for short and broken sentences, supplement for no-subject sentences,explicitation for language with logical ambiguity and implicitness, simplification for redundant words and idioms, explanatory interpreting and borrowing for political words and idioms as well as literal interpreting and paraphrasing for metaphors.This thesis has found that firstly, the Skopos Theory can be applied in GPCI;secondly,2013Li Keqiang’s press conference interpreting (PCI for short) conforms to the three major rules of the Skopos Theory;thirdly, the typical methods for2013Li Keqiang’s PCI classified from the point view of the Skopos Theory are practical and operational.