Consecutive Interpreting From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

The cooperation and communication among countries are ever increasing as the deepening of economic globalization brings all of us closer than before.The world is witnessing growing collaboration in fields like trade,politics,education,science and technology as well as cultural industry,in which consecutive interpretation plays an indispensable role.In 1986,Dan Sperber and Deride Wilson put forward the Relevance Theory in their co-authored book: Relevance: Communication and Cognition.Sperber and Wilson argue that the communication between people can be seen as an ostensive-inferential process.As consecutive interpretation falls into the category of verbal communication,the Relevance Theory can be applied to explain and guide the practice of consecutive interpretation.From the perspective of the Relevance Theory and with the transcript of site interpretation as material,the author aims to find out how to achieve the maximal relevance and optimal relevance by better handling the differences between Chinese and English when interpreting,so as to improve the interpretation and enjoy a better communication.The author finds that how well the audience understand the speaker is determined by several factors,which include cognitive environments,encyclopedic knowledge and the interpretation strategies adopted by the interpreter.With this thesis,the author hopes to shed some light on how to deal with the language differences when doing interpretation.