Interpreting Strategies Of Chinese Culture-specific Words And Expressions From Interpretive Theory Perspective

The premier’s press conference serves as an important window for the world to know about China.In the Q & A sessions,there often appears Chinese culture-specific words and expressions,such as ancient Chinese poetry,new expressions like “mass entrepreneurship and innovation” and “reform of streamlining administration and delegating powers”,and grass-root expressions like “Talking the talk is not as good as walking the walk”.Since these Chinese culture-specific words have no equivalents in English,the English audience may not be able to understand their meanings if the interpreter only did literal interpretations.Although many scholars have studied the interpretation of Chinese culture-specific words from the perspective of Interpretive Theory,most of them have some shortcomings,such as theoretical deviation from reality,outdated corpus selection,lack of corresponding application scenarios for translation strategies.This study takes the interpretation texts of the Premier’s Press Conferences from 2016 to 2018 as examples.It divides the culturespecific words into three categories: traditional culture-loaded words,political and economic words,and grass-root expressions.Typical examples are selected for text analysis.Guided by the core idea of the Interpretive Theory,the paper proposes corresponding interpreting strategies,namely literal translation,addition,free interpretation,interpretative translation,voice conversion,semantic integration and omission.It is hoped that these strategies can help improve the interpreting quality of Chinese culture-specific words.Finally,this paper reflects on the application of the Interpretive Theory to the interpretation of Chinese culture-specific words.Firstly,some words are better translated without the process of “deverbalization”.These words include independent semantic units;words that are context-free and could be directly translated into the target language based on the interpreter’s cultural knowledge;words that are difficult to find equivalents in English and are better be translated literally to retain the cultural elements due to their strong cultural characteristics.Secondly,the Interpretive Theory is further explained that besides meaning equivalence,emphasis should be given on the equivalence of discourse features,such as the speaker’s position,attitude,emotion and humor.