| This report draws on a simulated C-E consecutive interpretation of two episodes of“Comments on Zizhi Tongjian,” a broadcast on CCTV in 2021.The author writes this report based on the major difficulties encountered in the interpretation practice and on the coping tactics of them.In the two episodes of “Comments on Zizhi Tongjian” there are many cultural schemata to which the target language audience may have never been exposed,resulting in cultural schema defaults.In this report,the author divides cultural schema defaults into three categories: 1)difficulties in interpreting cultural schema defaults concerning ancient books and records;2)difficulties in interpreting cultural schema defaults concerning historical figures and stories;3)difficulties in interpreting cultural schema defaults concerning historical systems and titles.The above difficulties impair the fluency and accuracy of the interpretation,so relevance theory was applied in this report.Relevance theory holds that interpretation is essentially a process in which the interpreter seeks the optimal relevance between the cognitive context of source language and that of target language.Therefore,interpretation ought to be natural and concise and it cannot be unnecessarily difficult for the audience to understand.Under the guidance of relevance theory,the author proposes the corresponding coping tactics,which are:1)addition and generalization for cultural schema defaults concerning ancient books and records;2)simplification and addition for cultural schema defaults concerning historical figures and stories;3)paraphrase and substitution for cultural schema defaults concerning historical systems and titles.From the perspective of relevance theory,this report examines the difficulties caused by cultural schema defaults while interpreting “Comments on Zizhi Tongjian” and proposes corresponding coping tactics,which may provide reference for other interpreters to conduct interpretation practices,studies and further exploration when encountering similar interpretation difficulties in the future. |
