On Adaptability Of Context In Government Press Conference Interpreting

This thesis attempts to study the adaptability of context and explore appropriateapproaches to make satisfying contextual adaptation in Chinese government pressconference interpreting.By virtue of China’s increasing economic status and international influence, thegovernment press conferences after the conclusion of the two sessions (the NationalPeople’s Congress and Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference) since1991have attracted more and more attention of Chinese and foreign media. Theinterpreting on these press conferences not only serves as the bridge linking thejournalists and spokesmen but also provides a new field for interpreting research.Interpreting, including the interpreting at the government press conferences, is adynamic contextual communication. It is inevitable that interpreters would encounterthe problem of language choices in the process of interpreting, in order to beconsistent with different contextual factors to transfer original message accurately andachieve smooth communication. As adaptation theory, proposed by Vershueren fromthe perspective of pragmatics, is involved with the issue of language choices drivenby interlingual and/or extralingual factors, the author employs its views on context inthis study.The examples in this thesis are extracted from the transcript of the interpreting ofPremier Wen’s answering journalists’ questions after the conclusion of the twosessions in2011and2012, and case studies are conducted on these examplesexploring the adaptation in three aspects, namely, linguistic context, communicativecontext, and selective contextual adaptation. The author holds that both linguisticcontext and communicative context attach great importance to the interpreting and theinterpreter should select the most appropriate contextual component to adapt to basedon the specific condition.Hopefully this thesis could raise the interpreter’s awareness of the importance of context and provide some approaches to improving the interpreter’s overallperformance in government press conferences.