The Interpretation Of Culture-loaded Chinese Expressions In The Light Of The Cooperative Principle

In the course of interpreting, expressions, which bear strong connotations of a nation’s history and culture, often pose enormous challenge to interpreters. How to convert a culture-loaded expression from a source language into an acceptable expression in a target language? Previous studies discussed much about their translation methods and strategies. This thesis explores the interpreting strategies for culture-loaded expressions within the framework of the Cooperative Principle put forward by Herbert Paul Grice in 1975. The thesis addresses the following three concerns:causes of problematic English interpretation of culture-loaded Chinese expressions, the feasibility of the adoption of the Cooperative Principle in the practice of interpretation, and strategies for interpreting culture-loaded expressions against the Cooperative Principle. The thesis presents the following findings. Firstly, problematic interpretation of culture-loaded Chinese expressions mainly result from three aspects-features of interpreting and culture-loaded expressions, and interpreters’thinking patterns and weak cultural awareness. Secondly, the Cooperative Principle can well facilitate interpreting as the two share the purpose of bridging communication between speakers and listeners. Thirdly, based on the quality, quantity, relation and manner maxims in the Cooperative Principle, the author puts forward corresponding interpreting strategies for the interpretation of culture-loaded expressions. Interpreters can adopt word-to-word and meaning-to-meaning interpreting to realize the quality maxim, amplification and omission to observe the quantity maxim, free translation to meet the relation maxim, and visualization of logic by adding connective or conjunction words to follow the manner maxim. Apart from broadening the scope of the adoption of the Cooperative Principle, the thesis has its significance in the English interpretation of culture-loaded Chinese expressions and in the spread of Chinese culture.