A Study On Minority Culture Interpretation From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

With the implementation of Development of the Western Regions and the Belt and Road Initiatives,ethnic minority culture has been widely concerned by people both at home and abroad.The form of minority culture dissemination has changed from translating literary works to translating all kinds of works,simultaneous interpreting,consecutive interpreting,and setting up cultural courses at Confucius Institutes.Therefore,the training of relevant interpreters plays a vital role in spreading minority culture and further developing China's economy and enhancing her political status.This thesis focuses on the study of interpreting the ethnic minority culture in light of adaptation theory which is proposed by Jef Verschueren in his work Understanding Pragmatics.It consists of three parts.In the first part,the three notions: variability,negotiability and adaptability of language choices are introduced.The definition and four study angles of adaptation theory are illustrated with emphasize upon the importance of applying adaptation theory to interpretation studies.The four study angles are contextual correlates of adaptability,structural objects of adaptability,dynamics of adaptability,salience of the adaptation process.The second part elaborates on the problems of minority culture interpretation from the aspects of language barriers,cultural background,address terms as well as customs through quantitative and qualitative analysis of the experiment and questionnaire.It mainly takes Uyghur culture interpretation as an example.Some other ethnic minority culture interpretation is introduced briefly.The experimental subjects are divided into two groups: group A consists of Han Chinese students who major in interpreting,and group B is made up of Uyghur students with the same major.Through comparison,it turns out that the familiarity of language,cultural background,address terms,customs could directly influence the validity of the interpretation.Besides,the English competence also has an impact upon the quality of the interpretation.Therefore,applying appropriate interpreting methods and enhancing minority culture awareness would improve interpreters' interpreting capability.The last part probes into the application of adaptation theory to minority culture interpretation from the angles of contextual correlates of adaptability,structural objects of adaptability,dynamics of adaptability,salience of the adaptation process.Meanwhile,some strategies,such as omission,transliteration,free interpretation,literal interpretation,explanation and the combination of these strategies,are put forward to solve the problems in minority culture interpretation.With the adaptation theory as the guidance,this thesis analyzes the specific problems by giving substantial examples so as to provide interpreters with a more profound understanding of ethnic minority culture and to offer them some new ideas and methods in this respect.