A Report On The Consecutive Interpreting Of Yi Zhongtian's “my View On History” From The Perspective Of The Skopos Theory

With the improvement of international status of China,the interactions between China and other countries become more and more frequent.And against this backdrop,speeches by Chinese scholars have become an important way for foreigners to learn about Chinese history and culture.Translation and interpreting are found to be playing an important,sometimes even crucial,role in facilitating the exchange between Chinese cultures and other cultures across the world.The report takes the lecture “My View on History” by Yi Zhongtian in Beijing Institute of Technology as a research focus.The language of the lecture is characterized with rich historical knowledge,colloquial language,a great number of social culture-loaded words and linguistic culture-loaded words as well as proverbs and slangs.The mock interpreting was conducted under the guidance of the Skopos Theory.Under the guidance of the three basic principles(skopos rule,coherence rule,fidelity rule)of the Skopos Theory,this report dwells on four interpreting strategies:(1)literal translation,maintaining the original language form,including words,sentence structure and metaphor,while keeping the language fluent and easy to understand;(2)free translation,taking sentence translation as a unit while separating from original image and grammatical structure without gains or losses of the original meaning;(3)addition,adding some words,phrases,or sentences to make the interpretation more consistent with the target language context and habits;(4)omission,omitting the repeated words while interpreting without affecting the original meaning,and trying to be concise.All the four interpreting strategies are illustrated with concrete examples,in the hope of providing reference for novice interpreters.