A Practice Report On Consecutive Interpreting For The "2018 Seminar On Poverty Reduction For Developing Countries" From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

In July 2018,the International Poverty Reduction Center of China(IPRCC)and the Ministry of Commerce(MOFCOM)jointly organized the “2018 Seminar on Poverty Reduction for Developing Countries” in order to share China's experiences on poverty reduction with other developing countries.The author worked as an interpreter and a volunteer for this seminar.In this practice report,the author analyzes the interpreting task for the opening ceremony of this seminar on July 6.Under the framework of skopos theory and based on the requirements of the client,the author first identifies the three purpose types of this task(i.e.principal purpose,mid-level purpose,and basic purpose)and their multiple layers.Built on these task purposes and detailed case analyses,the author identifies the four obstacles for the interpreter to achieving the task purposes: expressions with Chinese characteristics,Chinese poetry,idiomatic expressions,and titles and names in a third language.Then the author discusses the three coping strategies she used to overcome the obstacles,including choosing simple syntactical structures and words,further explaining the message,and adapting the forms to the target culture.With the help of these strategies,the interpreter managed to achieve the task purposes.Considering that China is hosting a growing number of such multi-country seminars for foreign officials,the author hopes that this report could offer experiences and strategies to other interpreters when handling similar interpreting tasks.