A Research On The Interpreting Of Premier Wen’s Press Conferences-from The Perspective Of SFL’s Concept Of Context

The relation between context and interpreting has been discussed a lot inprevious studies of interpreting, yet too much emphasis has been given on theimportance of co-text or linguistic context on comprehension in interpreting, and thespecific role of context of culture and context of situation has less been explored.Besides, many previous studies which combine linguistics with interpretation focusedmore on theoretical analysis than on empirical analysis. This thesis has made an effortto study the role played by context in interpreting by applying the concept of contextin SFL (systemic functional linguistics) to interpreting in Premier Wen’s annual pressconferences.The thesis firstly overviews the concept of context in SFL. Context mainlycomprises of three strata: the higher stratum is context of culture, the stratum in themiddle is context of situation (or register, including field, tenor and mode), and thelower stratum is co-text (or linguistic context), which is the reflection of the abovetwo strata. Then, the relation between context and interpreting is discussed byintroducing the Comprehension Equation of the founder of Effort Model, Daniel Gile,thus, the importance of linguistic context and non-linguistic context in interpreting isemphasized and confirmed. After this, characteristics of Premier Wen’s annual pressconferences are explored, proving that such conferences provide typical examples forthis study. Next, the thesis makes a case study by applying the concept of context inSFL to Premier Wen’s annual press conferences interpreting. At last, the study reachesthe conclusion that for such conferences, the interpreter needs to be equipped withabundant cultural knowledge. Moreover, the context of situation (register) ofinterpreting in such cases is formal to a large degree and exerts an impact on thechoice of language for the interpreter on the levels of phonology, diction and sentence.Besides, based on linguistic context, the interpreter can infer from some ambiguous orless logical clues, to comb up the original speech and come out with correct andlogical interpretation.