Relevance-Theoretic Account Of Cultural Default In Consecutive Interpreting

This thesis takes a relevance-theoretic perspective to investigate the phenomenon of cultural default in consecutive interpreting. Cultural default refers to the default of the mutually shared cultural background knowledge between the speaker and the intended audience. The intended meaning conveyed by the default cultural factors is enriched by retrieval of cultural schemas stored in the memory of the intended audience. In interpretation, cultural default always breeds sense vacuum for the target-language audience due to the fact that the cognitive environments between the source-language speaker and the target-language audience are not identical or similar. In fact, the investigation of cultural default in interpretation is of vital importance in three aspects. Pragmatically speaking, it contributes to the success of consecutive interpreting at press conference. Theoretically, it would further illustrate the explanatory power of Relevance Theory on the account of cultural default in consecutive interpreting. Culturally, a proper interpretation of cultural default plays a pivotal role in disseminating the culture of a certain nation to others.Relevance Theory (Sperber&Wilson1986/1995) aims to explore the mechanism of human communication by answering two questions:what is communicated and how communication is achieved. Interpretation study centers on what should be translated and how success is achieved in interpretation. Therefore, interpretation can be studied in the framework of Relevance Theory. In fact, researchers like Gutt, Setton, He Ziran, Zhao Yanchun, Li Zhanxi, Wang Jianguo, etc. all claim that Relevance Theory has a great explanatory power on translation (interpretation). Scholars maintain that, in the light of Relevance Theory, interpretation is composed of two communicative processes: the first process refers to the communication between the source-language speaker and the source-language audience (including the interpreter); the second process relates to the communication between the interpreter and the target-language audience. Thus faithfulness in interpretation requires the second communicative process to resemble the first communicative process in most relevant aspects, which differs from the traditional belief about faithfulness that often highlights "semantic equivalence" or "functional equivalence". Based on Relevance Theory and its latest research developments, the discussion of this thesis adopts the methodologies of theoretic deduction, comparative analysis and example analysis and finally unfolds in the following way:Chapter one states the significance of the thesis, research questions of the thesis, the methodology and data collection used in the thesis. Chapter two reviews the previous studies on relevance-theoretic account of translation (interpretation) and the studies on cultural default interpretation, aiming to find out the contributions and limitations of previous studies. Chapter three firstly gives a general overview to Relevance Theory. Secondly, it investigates the mechanism of interpretation in the perspective of Relevance Theory. Finally, it concludes the implications drawn from Relevance Theory. Chapter four elaborates the notion of cultural default at the very beginning. Then it takes a relevance-theoretic view to account the phenomenon of cultural default in terms of rationality, translatability and constraints of it. After that, it discusses the principle, strategies and methods applicable in dealing with cultural default in the light of Relevance Theory. Finally, it analyzes the cases of cultural default interpretation at premier Wen Jiabao’s press conference. Chapter five summarizes the main findings and limitations of this research, and furthermore, gives suggestions to further research on this topic.Based on relatively logical elucidation and discussion, conclusions of this research are summarized as:Relevance Theory has a great explanatory power on the account of cultural default in consecutive interpreting; Wang Jianguo’s principle of equal inferential distance can be regarded as the ideal principle to guarantee faithfulness in consecutive interpreting; direct interpretation and indirect interpretation are two strategies feasible and applicable in dealing with cultural default in the practice of consecutive interpreting.