On C-E Consecutive Interpretation From The Perspective Of Thematic Theory

Thematic theory is one of the important filed of text analysis.Consecutive interpretation rests on the level of text and interpreters are expected to handle the message of the speech more accurately and logically,which makes it feasible to apply thematic theory in the studies of consecutive interpretation.Many scholars have conducted the researches on thematic theory in translation,but there are only a few researches combining thematic theory with interpretation studies.Among those application of thematic theory to interpretation,researches are mainly confined to simultaneous interpretation,and systemic analysis of such formal consecutive interpretation of press conference has seldom been seen.Therefore,the author attempts to conduct a contrastive analysis of the theme-rheme structures and thematic progression patterns in the Chinese source text and English target text based on the transcript by qualified interpreter for Premier Li Keqiang's Meeting with the Press in2017.The major findings drawn from the contrastive analysis are as follows: On the whole,all three kinds of themes are commonly adopted when organizing a text either in Chinese or English.But specific differences between the source text and the target text are also demonstrated,including: 1.Chinese features topic-comment structure while English features subject-predicate structure.2.Ellipsis theme accounts for a much larger portion in Chinese texts than in English texts.3.Chinese texts lack cohesive ties while connectives are a necessity in English texts.Furthermore,the two reasons behind those differences between the source text and the target text are concluded: 1.Chinese stands as a topic-prominent language while English as a subject-prominent language.2.Chinese is a kind of paratactic language while English hypotactic.Accordingly,three corresponding interpretation strategies are innovatively suggested: 1.Supplement of subjects in the English target text.2.Restructuring from topic-comment to subject-predicate.3.Addition ofcohesive ties.It is hoped that this research can provide a new point of view on consecutive interpreting studies,and the findings could be used as a reference for consecutive interpreting study and practice.