A Report On The Interpreting Practice Of China-aid Agricultural Training Courses Of The Ministry Of Commerce

Agricultural training is a significant component of China-aid projects.Consecutive interpreting plays a key role in China-aid training courses on agriculture.It not only helps China share its advanced experience in the field of agriculture with other countries,but also promotes friendship between these countries and China.Most of the existing interpreting practice reports related to agricultural training courses focused on the interpreter’s subjectivity or interpreting strategies based on inter-cultural communicative awareness.However,few scholars explored functions of the source language and analyzed the use of techniques in conveying the meaning of the source text from the perspective of systemic functional linguistics.Systemic functional linguistics believes that a context consists of three variables:field,tenor and mode;and language has three meta-functions:the ideational function,the interpersonal function and the textual function.In order to convey the speaker’s meaning,the interpreter should have an understanding of the intentions of the speaker and functions of language,then adopt suitable interpreting techniques to ensure accuracy in expressing ideational meaning,appropriateness in conveying interpersonal meaning and coherence in interpreting textual meaning.On the basis of the interpreting practice in Yuan Longping High-tech Agriculture Co.,Ltd.,the report consists of three parts,namely,the overview of the project,description of the interpreting process and case analysis.Under the framework of Halliday’s systemic functional linguistics,the current author discusses the influence of three meta-functions on the choosing of interpreting techniques and concludes a series of interpreting techniques.In the process of interpreting,the interpreter can transform process types or convert voice for the realization of the ideational function;concretize mood and modality or elucidate obscure information for the realization of the interpersonal function;select the same themes or add themes for the realization of the textual function.The report summarizes gains and inadequacies of the practice and puts forward recommendations for similar research and practice in the future.Studying interpreting from the perspective of systemic functional linguistics proves to be feasible through the practice.Systemic functional linguistics helps the interpreter understand the purports and contents of the source language both at the macro and micro level.At the macro level,three contextual variables enable the interpreter to have a general understanding of the interpreting project;at the micro level,three meta-functions remind the interpreter to adopt suitable interpreting techniques based on major systems of each function so that the meaning of the source text will be conveyed.