A Study On Methods Of Interpreting Political Metaphors From Chinese To English In Press Conferences From The Perspective Of Interpretive Theory

With the increasing international exchanges,interpreting activities have become an indispensable bridge for communication between countries.The Premier‘s press conferences following the National People‘s Congress(NPC)and Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference(CPPCC)are representative among interpreting activities for its large scale and international influence.As Chinese political metaphors are euphemistic and implicit with Chinese characteristics and there exist differences between Chinese and English,the process of interpreting political metaphors becomes challenging.And it is not easy to make the audience understand precisely the senses of the political metaphors in the source language through interpreting.In order to ensure the interpreting quality of political metaphors in the Premier Li Keqiang‘s press conferences as well as to accurately and completely convey the meaning of political metaphors,it is important to employ the appropriate methods to interpret political metaphors.For this thesis,the author collected the data of political metaphors from the live videos of Premier Li Keqiang‘s press conferences following the NPC and CPPCC sessions from 2014 to 2018 as research materials.This thesis examines the possible factors causing difficulties in interpreting political metaphors and analyzes some effective methods employed by the interpreters from the perspective of Interpretive Theory.The thesis tries to answer the following questions through the research: 1)What are the possible factors causing difficulties in interpreting political metaphors in Premier Li Keqiang‘s press conferences? 2)What interpretation methods are employed by the interpreters to deal with the difficulties caused by these factors? 3)Are these interpretation methods in line with Interpretive Theory?It is found that there exist two possible factors causing difficulties in interpreting political metaphors.They are cultural vacancy and differences in associative thinking.Under the situation of cultural vacancy,three methods are found to be feasibly used,including 1)retaining the SL image with explanation;2)converting political metaphor to sense and 3)omitting the redundant SL image.Under the situation of differences in associative thinking,five methods are found to be feasibly used,including 1)retaining the SL image by interpreting metaphor into simile;2)retaining the SL image with explanation;3)replacing the SL image with TL image;4)converting political metaphor to sense and 5)omitting the redundant SL image.Through the analysis of the examples,all these interpretation methods are found in line with deverbalization,the major concept of Interpretive Theory.It is hoped that all these interpretation methods in this thesis could provide a practical reference for interpreting political metaphors in the future.