A Report On The Conference Interpreting Of 2018 Chengdu-UN Habitat Cooperative Project

As globalization gathers pace,an increasing number of governments and enterprises are carrying out international cooperation and exchanges,in a bid to achieve leap-forward development by drawing upon advanced international experience and combining the inspirations with local conditions.To develop Chengdu into a more livable,eco-friendly and sustainable city with time-honored history and profound culture,Chengdu municipal government signed a cooperation agreement with UN.In September 2018,according to the agreement,several UN experts came to Chengdu to conduct the fourth on-the-spot investigation into Shaocheng Urban Organic Renewal Project and offer instructions in accordance with international standard and vision.Therefore,an interpreter is needed to be involved in the conferences convened during their stay.After resume screening,proficiency testing and an interview organized by the translation company,the author was honored to serve as the conference interpreter for the project,playing an indispensable role in the project by setting up a language bridge between the UN experts and Chengdu government to facilitate the smooth communication and cooperation.The report is based on the interpreting practice of conferences held during UN experts' stay in Chengdu.Three conferences,namely the Meet-and-Greet for Experts from UN-Habitat and UNEP,Kuanmen Community Workshop symposium and Shaocheng Organic Renewal Project's follow-up panel discussion,are chosen as the main materials for analysis of bilingual translation.In a bid to pinpoint,analyze and solve the major difficulties and problems popping up during interpreting,such as the difficulty in interpreting culture-loaded expressions,colloquial words with lexical gap,and in conveying the original feeling and emotion of speakers,the author resorts to the Theory of Adaptation with the focus on the adaptation to communicative context,including the cultural,mental and physical aspects.The contextual adaptation,especially the adaptation to communicative context specified in the theory,is found to be able to serve as a guiding principle to ensure the quality and efficiency of interpretation,and some relevant tactics can be applied correspondingly: As for how to make flexible adaption to communicative context to address the problem in interpreting colloquial expressions with lexical gap,supplementary explanation can be made,and some indigestible cultural image can be omitted,to adapt to the social(cultural)world.In terms of emotion conveyance,adjustments can be made in tone,the technique of amplification can be applied to enliven the atmosphere and convey the original emotion of the speakers,so as to adapt to the mental world.The author hopes that the practice report can provide empirical materials and reference for future interpreting practice and studies,especially regarding the small and medium-sized symposiums.