On The Interpretation Difficulties In Chinese Leader's Speeches From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Speeches by Chinese leaders on important occasions function as a significant channel to convey China's messages to the world. Since the 18th Party Congress, China's new leaders has began to elaborate sophisticated insights with plain language which poses new challenges to interpreters.This paper will study the interpretation difficulties in the speeches by China's new leadership from the perspective of Relevance Theory. The Relevance Theory was developed by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson. According to the theory, humans tend to pursue maximum cognition with minimum effort. The degree of relevance can be defined with the formula:Relevance=Contextual effect/Processing effort. This paper will first classify interpretation difficulties in the interpretation process into four categories:ancient prose interpretation, acronym interpretation, idiom interpretation and Internet buzzword interpretation. Then this paper will analyze in a detailed and comprehensive manner of typical examples of interpretation difficulties, comment on the interpretation from the perspective of Optimal Relevance theory, and offer coping strategies. In the case of ancient prose interpretation, when literal interpretation can create good contextual effect, then this strategy should be adopted. If literal interpretation increases the processing effort on part of the audience, then free interpretation or the strategy of addition should be used. With regard to the acronym interpretation, the addition strategy is often applied to explicate the implied meaning to reduce the processing effort and enhance relevance. As to idiom and internet buzzword interpretation, literal interpretation, literal interpretation with addition, or free interpretation strategies can be adopted to enhance relevance.The author hopes that this study can offer new perspectives for the study of Chinese leaders'speeches and provide reference in similar interpretation practice and convey China's messages to the world through better interpretation.