A Discourse Analysis In The View Of Thematic Progression Theory And Chinese-English Consecutive Interpretation Strategies

In consecutive interpretation,interpreters make use should avoid word-to-word interpretation,and try to grasp the structure.and the coherence and cohesion of the whole text,so as to make the target language conform to the language features.In order to achieve a good interpretation effect,interpreters need to have textual awareness in mind and actively apply it to the interpretation process.Thematic progression theory provides a way to embody textual consciousness from the perspective of linguistics.Using thematic progression,it is possible to classify the theme and rheme of each clause,and find out which thematic progression pattern the discourse employs by observing the relationship between the theme and rheme.Based on the press conference record of Premier Li Keqiang meeting journalists in 2019,this thesis analyses and compares the source and target discourse in the perspective of thematic progression.After collecting and analysing the data,this thesis concludes that this kind of discourse has preferences for simple linear progression,constant theme,and split rheme pattern.If i)the source discourse(SD)uses simple theme or multiple themes,ii)the interpreter wants to maintain the SD’s logic,iii)the SD is made use of simple sentence structures,or iv)the interpreter wants to preserve the speaker’s features,the interpreter preserves the original thematic progression pattern.If i)the basic sentence structures are different in Chinese and English,ii)the SD uses the adverbial clause or a complicated subject,iii)the SD has complex sentence structure or overlapping information in the neighbouring sentences,iv)the interpreter only needs to preserve the underlying meaning rather than word-to-word conversion,the interpreter abandons or changes the original patterns.Observing and summarising the interpretation strategy used by the interpreter,this thesis finds that the interpreters can maintain or change the original pattern by means of reference,ellipsis,reiteration,generalizing nouns,etc.Apart from this,as the structures of the progression patterns are clearly illustrated by the figures,interpreters can choose to follow the layout of the original progression to take notes in consecutive interpretation.