Strategies Research In Interpretating Long & Complex Sentences In Governmental Press Conferences From The Perspective Of Interpretive Theory

In recent years,the various kinds of press conferences held every year by Chinese government are attracting more and more attention worldwide.Owing to the sheer formality of governmental conferences and Chinese language features,there always appear some long and complex sentences in speaker’s utterance,posing great burden to interpreters.To effectively tackle with long and complex sentences in interpreting,this thesis analyzes the characteristics of long and complex sentences in governmental press conferences and conducts an interpretation experiment to validate three coping strategies proposed under the guidance of Interpretive Theory.In the experiment,three typical long and complex Chinese sentences are all excerpted from governmental conferences.The three sentences are marked as two versions,‘original version’ and ‘enhanced version’ which are with instructions based on interpretive theory for better comprehension.Six first-year graduate school students,studying interpretation in Shanghai International Studies University,are divided into two Groups,Group A and Group B.They are at similar level in terms of English proficiency,without receiving systematic training or study on interpreting theories.Group A and Group B subjects are arranged to interpret the two versions of the three sentences mentioned above in the same physical environment.Each version of interpreting is recorded and finally analysis and comparison of these interpretations are conducted.Experiment data analysis and comparison show that better comprehension of Interpretive Theory will be conductive to the interpreting of Chinese long and complex sentences themselves.Three proposed strategies: Restructuring by logic connection,Sentence segmentation and paraphrasing of words with Chinese characteristics,Information increase and deletion,are also validated by this experiment.Finally,this thesis points out the limitations of the experiment design and concludes the three coping strategies proposed can shed some light upon student interpreters’ study and professional interpreter’s working activities when they are confronted with long and complex Chinese sentences,not only in government press conferences,but also on other occasions.