On The Application Of Interpretive Theory To Foreign Affairs Interpretation

Interpretive theory,proposed by Danica Seleskovitch and M.Lederer in the1960 s,is the first systematic interpretation theory in the international interpreting community.This theory turns its focus from linguistic structure to interpreters' cognitive process and holds that the aim of translation or interpretation is not to transmit language itself but the communicative meaning.From the moment of its advent,this theory attracts great attention and is then widely applied in interpreting activities.With the accelerating pace of globalization,foreign communication between China and the outside world is increasing frequent.In interpreting sites,due to the policy-orientation and sensitivity of Chinese leaders' speeches,an inadvertent mistake may cause misunderstanding or even conflict,which greatly increases the difficulty of interpretation.Therefore,the research on this field becomes particularly important and necessary.The application of interpretive theory to foreign affairs interpretation is a relatively new attempt in domestic academic research.This study is basically descriptive,with case analysis and literature research employed.After the detailed analysis of the interpretation of Chinese leaders' speeches,this research probes into the guiding significance of interpretive theory for interpreting practice and ultimately proposes five interpreting techniques.Major findings of the study are summarized as follows:First of all,the linguistic features of foreign affairs interpretation are unique.In diplomatic occasions,Chinese leaders are inclined to explicate the national policy and conditions by political words with Chinese characteristics.Moreover,the speakers are always thinking while speaking,as a result,sentence structures are inevitably loose and semantics never fail to be incomplete.Secondly,interpretive theory is of important guiding significance to foreign affairs interpretation.By means of case analysis,it can be found that the interpreters,in interpreting rhetoric sentences,tend to strike off the shackles of SL and reorganize its sense based on their grasping of communicative significance.When the phenomena of lexis vacancy and cultural differences exist between SL and TL,they always combine with cultural context and manage to get sense without the bind of linguistic form.Besides,in order to achieve emotional equivalence,the interpretersstrive to move beyond literal meaning of SL and aptly adjust their expressions.The analysis results show that the deverbalization advocated by interpretive theory run through the whole process of interpreting activities.Finally,from the perspective of interpretive theory,this study explores five techniques often used in interpreting,namely information addition,information omission,explanatory interpreting,syntactic restructuring and logic processing.After case study,it can be seen that the techniques of information omission,syntactic restructuring and logic processing are always employed in the interpretation of parallel or figurative sentences.In interpreting political or culture-loaded words,the interpreters are apt to take such techniques as explanatory interpreting,information omission and information addition.In addition,Syntactic restructuring and logic processing are the most common techniques used to interpret the loose sentences in interpreting sites.