On The Pragmatic Functions And Interpreting Strategies Of Chinese Modal Particles �Ma�,�Ne� And �A�

With the rapid development of China's economy, interpreting plays an increasingly significant role in intercultural interaction. Consequently, research concerning interpreting is on the increase. However, how to interpret Chinese modal particles properly are not given enough attention despite their importance.A modal particle is a unique kind of auxiliary in Chinese. One of the major roles of modal particles is to indicate pause in the middle of a sentence or to strengthen tones at the end of a sentence. �ma(?)�, �ne(?)� and �a(?) � are among these modal particles. The present study mainly studies the pragmatic functions of �ma�, �ne� and �a� by examining their usage in the corpus. Besides, the interpreting strategies of the 3 modal particles are also suggested in accordance with their pragmatic functions.This thesis is a corpus-based study. The corpus is based on the 1998-2015 Press Conferences of the Two Sessions(NPC & CPPCC) due to their high authority. The corpus is composed of the transcription of the 1998-2015 Press Conferences of the Two Sessions(including Chinese and English version), which consists 258,422 words. The source language containing �ma�, �ne� and �a� and English versions are extracted from the corpus and their pragmatic functions are analyzed. The research results verify some conclusions drawn by previous studies and some newly-found functions are also discovered. 7 major pragmatic functions are summarized by this research: 1) calling for answer(�ma� and �ne�); 2) strengthening the judgment and rhetorical tone(�ma�, �ne� and �a�); 3) softening criticism(�ne�); 4) drawing attention(�ma� and �ne�); 5) posing challenge(�ma� and �ne�); 6) strengthening the tone of refuting(�ne� and �a�); 7) performing directive speech act(�a�). Then based on the 7 pragmatic functions, 5 interpreting strategies are suggested: 1) literal translation; 2) adding adverbs or adjectives(such as �enough�, �even� and so on) to strengthen tones; 3) changing the sentence type; 4) adding compound preposition or prepositional phrase(such as �in terms of�, �as for� and so on); 5) adding modal verbs(such as �could�).All in all, the present study probes into the pragmatic functions of modal particles in field interpreting situation and discusses some pragmatic interpreting strategies, which can be used as instrumental tools for the interpreting learners and teachers.