A Study On The Application Of Relevance Theory To Interpretation

With the development of globalization, the communication between countries is becoming more and more frequent, under which condition, interpretation, as the communicative bridge between language and culture, plays a more important role. Nowadays, because of the expansion of China’s opening up, the demand for interpretation has increased at a rapid speed. Therefore, interpreting practice gains great development, which guides a large number of experts and scholars to pay attention to the research of the theory relevant to interpretation. However, interpretation studies in China started late, lacking adequate support in the aspect of theory.Based on relevance theory proposed by Sperber and Wilson, this thesis makes a research about the application of the theory in interpretation, taking the example of Premier Li Keqiang’s speech in Chinese and foreign reporters Press Conference in 2014. First, this thesis reviews the history and development of interpretation, relevance theory at home and abroad, as well as the application of relevance theory to interpretation. Then it introduces some basic concepts in relevance theory, but lays emphasis on the joint of the theory and interpretation from two aspects:context and ostensive-inferential communication. According to relevance theory, the process of interpreting needs to be put into a certain context, for the same vocabulary, if in different contexts, can be different in meaning. Furthermore, the theory tells us the interpreter is not only a listener, but also a transmitter, whose task is to choose the proper context and combine the speaker’s ostensive stimuli with his own cognitive environments to infer the speaker’s intention, taking the target audience’s cognitive environment into account, and to reproduce the intention. By taking the example of Premier Li Keqiang’s speech interpretation in Chinese and foreign reporters Press Conference in 2014, there is a chapter illustrating the application of relevance theory to interpretation from two parts: language expression in interpretation and interpreting strategies. The former part involves vocabulary, syntax and cultural syntagm. And the latter part lists strategies, such as literal translation, free translation, amplification and simplification.In conclusion, this thesis aims to study interpretation from the perspective of relevance theory, which can adequately explain the process of interpretation. In addition, it emphasizes on the indispensable effect of RT on interpreting language expression and the instructive influence on the selecting of interpretation strategies.