Rank Shift Of Chinese-english Interpretation In Press Conference Of State Council Premier

As the press conference of State Council Premier is considered as an important channel for the world to know about China, more and more scholars are paying attention to the press conference each year. What?s more, the interpretation in the press conference has been the focus of interpretation study. However, most of the scholars? research are from the perspectives of cultural exchange, interpreter?s position or interpretation skills applied in the process, few of them focus on the aspect of syntax analysis or grammatical aspect.“Rank shift” was first put forward by Halliday. He put forward it from the perspective of systemic functional grammar. In Halliday?s theory, “rank” is equivalent to the concept of hierarchy and means “to include”. It refers to the grammatical unit ranking. Halliday?s “rank shift” mainly refers to a unit at one rank in grammar has the function of a unit at a lower rank. Therefore, the “rank shift” of Halliday is mainly the downward rank shift.Whereas some other scholars had expressed different views towards rank shift and some of them had analyzed the rationality of both the upward and downward rank shift. Other scholars also analyzed the relation between the grammatical metaphor and rank shift and found out the rationality of the existence of the upward rank shift.In this thesis, rank shift includes the downward shift and upward shift. The downward shift is the transfer of advanced grammar vocabulary form into a lower form. The upward shift is the opposite. It is a phenomenon in which a rank in one grammar unit being interpreted as the lower rank unit or the higher rank unit.Rank shift in this thesis can be the movement from the higher level to the lower level, like from sentence to clause, or the movement from the lower level to the higher level, like from word to phrase. The author would use Halliday?s “rank shift” as guidance and analyze the entire instances of rank shift in the press conference.This thesis has collected and classified the texts of C-E interpretation of the press conference of the State Council Premier from year 1998 to 2014 and has found many instances of rank shift in C-E interpretation process. What?s more, it illustrates the reasons for each instance and the significance for the future interpretation process.Hereby the author would like to research on interpretation of press conference in terms of another point of view. And the author had classified five reasons for rank shift. The five reasons for rank shift are to save time, to be concise and clear, to be firm, to be more detailed and to be more formal.Through the research, we are able to learn interpretation methods and the interpreter?s dealing modes during the interpretation process. What?s more, the research will help guiding the future interpretation work and be beneficial for the interpreting practices.