Consecutive Interpreting From The Perspective Of The Interpretive Theory Of Translation

Represented by Seleskovitch and Lederer,the Interpretive Theory of Translation suggests that the process of interpreting stresses on the conveyance of sense instead of highlighting the form or structure of language.Since the theory is based on a large number of practices,more attention has been attracted to its strong practicality.Meanwhile,the theory has been developing in continuous practices,which makes it one of the most influential interpretation theories.The Interpretative Theory of Translation suggests that interpretation has three stages,namely understanding,deverbalization and expression.This theory is of great significance for interpreters because it enables them to remove communication barriers and deliver meaningful information to the audience.In addition,the Interpretive Theory of Translation also proposes three levels of interpretation,namely interpreting at the levels of word,sentence and discourse.The theory emphasizes that interpretation should be done on the basis of a whole discourse instead of the literal interpretation of words or sentences.In this case,interpreters are able to understand the source text,which enables them to achieve the correspondence of sense between the source language and the target language,thereby improving the quality of interpretation.In this report,the author’s English-Chinese on-site consecutive interpretation of the presentation Meet the Germans is used as a case study based on the Interpretive Theory of Translation.This report will mainly analyze the author’s performance at the level of word,sentence and discourse.Unsuccessful scenarios mainly include:incomplete interpretation and misinterpretation due to the author’s insufficient competence in listening and lack of extra-linguistic knowledge and cognitive knowledge;inaccurate interpretation inconsistent with the Chinese expression because of the lack of understanding of the differences between Chinese and English sentence patterns and cultural-loaded words;redundancy of interpretation for neglecting the logic of discourse and lack of summarizing skills.Under the guidance of the Interpretive Theory of Translation,the author will analyze the problems in these scenarios,propose modification of the interpretation,and then figure out the interpreting strategies or suggestions so as to improve the interpreter’s competence in interpretive translation.