On "Unfaithful" Interpretation And Creative Treason

In traditional translation concept, faithfulness is the highest standard oftranslation, any deviation from the original text is considered to be inappropriate.However, as an important participant in translation activity, the translator/interpreterhas been put in an invisible position since ancient times.“Servant” and “voice-box”reflects the marginalized status of the translators. In the1980s, the French sociologistEscarpit proposed the conception of “creative treason”. This definition offers a newperspective for the translation standard. The translator, as an important subject intranslation, should make fully use of his/her creativity to translate the author’sintention. Then, the famous Chinese scholar Xie Tianzhen introduced this conceptinto China, and applied it in literary translation. Different from translation,interpretation requires the interpreter to be with the speakers and audience all the timein the process of interpreting, which makes the interpreter have more possibility tointerfere and participate in the communication process. This renders interpreter amore important role in the process of interpretation. The interpreter’s job should notonly convert a language to another, but also ensure a kind of effective and functionalcommunication. This makes the creative treason in interpretation have greater value inresearch.With the increasing national strength of China and more frequent exchanges withforeign countries, the press conference has become an important gateway tounderstand China’s policies and political views. Therefore, the press conferenceinterpretation (PCI) becomes a research focus in academic field. Due to the feature ofPCI, such as political-related topics and extemporaneousness, the press conferenceinterpretation is of great difficulty, in which a lot of splendid interpretation can befound. The seemingly “unfaithful” interpretation is actually the interpretation strategythat the interpreters adopt in order to achieve better communication, which can bringgreater space for the interpretation research in press conference. The interpreter, as the subject of interpretation activity, must exert their subjectivity appropriately byactively using their creative thinking. Meanwhile, they should avoid mechanicalinterpretation word for word according to the original text, but find the best way toconvey the speaker’s intention. The interpreters should regard themselves as thecoordinator and participant in the exchange so as to ensure the quality and smoothnessof the communication.This paper analyzes the “unfaithful” interpretation in the press conferenceinterpretation from the perspective of interpreter’s subjectivity. The introduction partgives an overview of the research background, purpose and significance of thisresearch. In literature review, the thesis summarizes the research achievements intranslator/interpreter’s subjectivity and “unfaithful” translation/interpretation, whichlays a firm theoretical foundation for the study of translator/interpreter’s subjectivityand “unfaithful” translation/interpretation. The third part makes a classification of“unfaithful” interpretation from the interpreter’s subjectivity, and analyzes the reasonsfor “unfaithful” interpretation. Then by using a large number of examples fromprevious press conference interpreting, it analyses the application of “unfaithful”interpretation from cultural level, language level and strategy level and the positivefunction of “unfaithful” interpretation, and discusses how to correctly bring into fullplay the interpreter’s subjectivity in PCI and how to enhance the quality ofinterpretation. Finally, this paper puts forward some effective methods of traininghigh-level interpreters in press conference interpretation from four aspects, namelythe cross-cultural awareness, knowledge background, current affairs and creativethinking, which provide a reference for the training and education of excellentinterpreters.