Interpretation Of Expressions With Chinese Characteristics In Press Conference Based On Relevance-adaptation Model

Recent years have witnessed increasing cultural exchanges between China and foreign countries,among which press conference of the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference serves as an important channel for the rest of the world to know more about China's domestic and foreign policies.During these press conferences,interpreters inevitably encounter some expressions with Chinese characteristics that may cause misunderstanding or confusion if not interpreted properly.These expressions mainly include set phrases,proverbs and common sayings,new expressions concerning politics,Internet catchwords,and quotes from poems and ancient books.Consecutive interpreting is about discourse comprehension and generation,and Relevance Theory and Adaptation Theory offer people a new approach for analyzing interpreters' mind during these two stages.The former regards communication as an ostensive-inferential process,while the latter one focuses more on dynamic adaptations made at linguistic and strategic levels.In view of the complementarity between the two theories,some scholars combine them and develop a new model.This thesis applies the Relevance-Adaptation Theoretic Model(RATM)into consecutive interpreting,and describes it as two ostensive-inferential processes,namely,interpreters play the role of both hearers and speakers.Guided by the RATM,interpreters seek relevance by adapting to background,linguistic and physical contexts of both utterers and target audience,and they also make full use of assumptions,encyclopedic knowledge,verbal and extra-verbal messages.Adaptation occurs when the two sides don't share similar cognitive or social-cultural context.Besides,interpreters also adapt to special emotion of speakers as well as English and Chinese language styles.Moreover,some coping strategies against linguistic and cultural barriers are summarized as follows: literal translation,borrowing,literal translation plus annotation,explanatory translation,free translation,combining literal and free translation,amplification,omission and combination.