A Report On Simulated C-E Simultaneous Interpreting Of The Culture Of Chinese Tea: Difficulties In Interpreting Culture-Specific Items And Coping Tactics

This simulated C-E simultaneous interpreting was conducted based on The Culture of Chinese Tea,a cultural lecture given at MOOC by Professor Chen Liang of Beijing Language and Culture University.The lecture is delivered in a forthright and expressive manner.Embracing rich and distinctive Chinese tea culture,this lecture is heavily-loaded with Culture-Specific Items(hereafter CSIs)which involve social,material and linguistic aspects.As receivers come from different countries with different cultural backgrounds,it is an intractable task to simultaneously interpret this cultural lecture while maximally maintaining the connotation of culture to facilitate cross-cultural communication.Based on the simulated C-E simultaneous interpreting,this report identifies and classifies the difficulties triggered by CSIs in the lecture,and adopts some tactics to cope with the difficulties.In consideration of immediacy of simultaneous interpreting,this interpreter endeavored to maximally preserve the cultural charm for promoting cross-cultural communication.Through the overall analysis of the transcription and receivers’ feedback,the difficulties are identified in consistency with the definition and classification of CSIs:(1)interpreting difficulties caused by material CSIs;(2)interpreting difficulties caused by social CSIs;(3)interpreting difficulties caused by linguistic CSIs.These difficulties affected the accuracy and fluency of the interpretation,which obviously hampered the achievement of cross-cultural exchange.In accordance with the purpose of this interpreting task,the interpreter adopted the Skopos theory as framework and proposed applicable tactics for the identified difficulties:(1)transliteration with explication,metaphrase;(2)paraphrase and analogy;(3)summarization of information and paraphrase.This practice proves that the strategies above could effectively resolve the difficulties encountered in this specific task and could shed light on similar interpreting practices.