On Interpretation Of President Xi’s Speeches From The Perspective Of German Functionalist Theory

Since President Xi Jinping took office in 2013, he has taken an active approach to dealing with foreign affairs. He has paid many foreign visits and delivered lots of speeches. President Xi’s speeches are a purposeful human communicative action. He wants to convey, through his speeches, China’s interests, national and foreign policies, stances and measures on certain issues to the international community. President Xi’s speeches are characterized by a repetition of words, parallel phrases, and political words with Chinese characteristics, long sentences and frequent use of proverbs, old sayings and expressions loaded with Chinese culture.In the thesis, the writer uses President Xi’s original Chinese speeches and interpreted English texts as the research materials, trying to analyze how German Functionalist Theory is applied in the interpreted texts. In doing so, the writer figures out the general principle of interpreting President Xi’s speeches, that is, to correctly convey the purpose, namely the information. Guided by the general principle and on the basis of the characteristics of President Xi’s speeches, the writer probes into how to interpret President Xi’s Chinese speeches from the perspective of German Functionalist Theory, that is, to omit repeated words, preserve or reorganize parallel phrases, cut long sentences into shorter ones by adding more subjects, literally or freely interpret Chinese poems, proverbs and old sayings and literally interpret political words with Chinese characteristics.