Coping Strategies For Cultural Imagery Nonequivalence In C-E Escort Interpreting

Cultural imagery nonequivalence can pose many obstacles to interpreters.This practice report,based on the author's interpreting practice for an intangible cultural heritage study project,starts with identifying problems the author encountered in interpreting Chinese idioms,Chinese puns as well as words and expressions with unique Chinese connotations.In light of schema theory,by analyzing these problems,the author concludes that it is cultural imagery nonequivalence that causes the interpreting problems.Inspired by Liu Mingdong's classification of cultural schema,the author classifies cultural imagery nonequivalence into three categories,namely,cultural imagery mismatch,cultural imagery vacancy,and cultural imagery overlap.Then,the author proposes strategies to deal with those problems—retaining,deleting,replacing,and adding cultural imageries.Interpreting methods such as literal interpreting,transliteration,liberal interpreting and explanation are selectively used to offer better rendition with the existing problems.Then a third-party feedback is provided to check the quality of the revised versions,proving that the revised rendition more eloquently conveys the cultural imageries in the source language,thus objectively confirming the feasibility of the strategies raised by the author.This report is a summary of the author's interpreting practice and it also aims at inspiring future potential interpreters.