Lexical Gap In Conference Interpreting

With the development of China’s economy and the improvement of China’s international status, interpreting is more and more important at present. The press conference after the Two Sessions is a significant platform to show China’s standpoints in politics, economy and culture. Thus, the interpreter in the press conference will not be too careful to choose the proper dictions. Undoubtedly, it is a big challenge for interpreters to produce a high quality interpretation in such a short time, especially when encountering with some words which are hard to find the equivalents in the target language. In the press conference, many frequently-used common words have different connotations in different contexts, so to find their correct equivalent expressions in English quickly is not an easy task. What’s more, many speakers are keen on using some poems, allusions or four-character phrases to express their opinions so as to achieve the emphasis and rhythmic effect. However, these words contain extensive and profound knowledge of China and the meaning of the words are highly condensed, it is rather difficult to find equivalents in English. All these above phenomenon can be categorized as lexical gap.Therefore, the author selects the interpreting of Premier Wen Jiabao’s2012Press Conference after the Fifth Session of the Eleventh NPC and CPPCC as the material for further analyzing. Based on the simulated interpreting practice, the author endeavors to have an analysis about how to deal with lexical gap in conference interpreting. This thesis consists of four chapters. The first chapter explains the background and requirement of the task. The second chapter briefly introduces the preparation before the interpreting task, which involves the collocation of interpreting materials and related words. The third chapter is the main body of this practice report. Combined with cases in interpreting and guided by the theory of context, the thesis discusses the factors leading to the lexical gap. To be specific, the lexical gap may occur as a result of the linguistic differences, cultural barriers and different mentality of the interpreter. For lexical gap, the author puts forward some suggestions such as following the guidance of context theory, employing various interpreting tactics and putting emphasis on preparation. The last chapter makes a conclusion about the interpreting practice and reiterates the theme of the thesis.