A Study On Press Conference Interpretation From The Interpretive Theory And Turn-taking

Press conference interpretation (Referred to as PCI hereinafter) can be regarded as a motivated cross-cultural communicative activity for its diplomatic and political characteristics. For interpreters, it is an extremely demanding and challenging work owning to the discrepancies of status, political position and cultural background between the addresser and the addressee. Therefore, it is of necessity for scholars to conduct researches about the press conference interpretation.This thesis studies the press conference (Referred to as PC hereinafter) from the interpretive theory and turn-taking. The interpretive theory, which is also called "communicative and interpretive theory" by Seleskovitch (1978), emphasizes that interpretation is a discourse communicative behavior and that the central task of interpreters is to deverbalize and transmit the sense, which is produced by the interaction between interpreters'language knowledge, cognitive supplements and the source discourse. The turn-taking system holds that PCI is a dynamic discourse process and the proper choice of turn-taking signals can promote the smooth progress of the overall communicative course.Through describing and exposing the participants (the interpreter, the addresser and the addressee) as well as the main interpersonal relationship (relationship between the addresser and the interpreter) in PCI, this thesis mainly answers the following questions:(1) Under the guidance of the interpretive theory, what are the specific interpreting process, the concrete principles of interpreting and the corresponding coping techniques to PCI? (2) How does the non-verbal mechanism function to smoothen turn exchanges in PCI?Through research and analysis, it is proved that the interpretive theory can enlighten interpreters about how to re-produce the sense of the source speech accurately and adequately, and that non-verbal mechanism of turn-taking can facilitate the turn transfer and furthermore make the overall communicative activity move on smoothly. Firstly, the interpretive theory, especially the concepts of sense and the Triangle Model, enlightens that a more detailed figure of the interpreting process can be constructed. Based on this interpreting process, the principles of PCI are put forward:complete interpretation of key points of explicit information; accurate and proper interpretation of implicit information (cultural information, affective information, etc.). Besides, through analyzing the data and video of PCI in 2010, four techniques for Chinese-English consecutive interpreting (Referred to as C-E consecutive interpreting hereinafter) are presented:literal translation of key points of explicit information; comprehension of textual information; paraphrasing of cultural implicit information as well as coordinating with nonverbal actions. Secondly, statistics shows that nonverbal signals play a significant role in promoting the smooth transfer of turns among participants of PCI. It should be paid special attention to by the interpreter.It is a meaningful attempt to study PCI from the interpretive theory and turn-taking. The present study is hoped to make some contributions to researches of conference interpretation and produce some enlightenments to interpreters.