On Interpretation of Cultural Factors in Press Conferences 英语专业毕业论文.doc

On Interpretation of Cultural Factors in Press Conferences Abstract：In recent years, China enjoys a fast economic development and higher international status. Cross-culture communications become more and more frequent, Especially during the annual NPC and CPPCC meetings, the importance of interpreting has been more than ever highlighted. The press conferences held by Chinese government during the NPC and CPPCC sessions are increasingly drawing worldwide attention. It is in this situation various culture-loaded expressions have always posed the greatest challenge for interpreters. This thesis, under the guidance of interpretive theory, researches the cultural factors including, four-character idioms, lines of poems, famous sayings or proverbs and allusions, political and economic phrases with Chinese characteristics and summarizes several effective interpretation strategies adopted in order to be helpful for translation research. Key words：press conference; interpretation; cultural factors; interpretation strategies 1. Introduction 1.1 The significance and objective of the thesisSince China's opening up, the over thirty years witnessed its great development. Its economy and comprehensive national strength and international competitiveness have been enhanced a lot. China's communication with other countries and regions become more and more frequent, thus cross-cultural communication is more essential.Press conferences play an important role for China to build a good international image. Especially during the annual National People's Congress(NPC) and Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference(CPPCC) session, presses from home and abroad get together to listen to China's voice.In the NPC and CPPCC sessions, interpreters play a critical role of bridging the gap between the speaker and target audience with different cultural and linguistic backgrounds, and making the parties of communication exchange their ideas smoothly without language barriers. On such occasions, speakers usually quote many expressions containing traditional Chinese cultural elements, like Chinese ancient poems, idioms and four-character phrases, proverbs, allusions, and economic and political phrases with Chinese characteristics. The interpretation of cultural-loaded expressions is a great challenge for interpreters.1.2 Methodology and data collection Interpretive Theory is the best theory to support the research of culture loaded expression on PCI. The main part of Interpretive Theory is the delivery of the sense of discourse rather than grammar or linguistic elements. The purpose of the thesis is to explicate some practical interpretation strategies of culture-loaded expressions to English effectively under the guidance of interpretive theory. The author downloaded videos of annual NPC and CPPCC press conferences speeches given by Premier Wen Jiabao and Ju Rongji in the past years from Internet, because these PCI stands for the highest level and they are the most authoritative interpretation in China. Then the author dictated most of them both in Chinese and English, especially the interpretation of sentences with Chinese cultural elements and expressions. Most of the press conferences provided Chinese to English interpretation, thus the thesis mainly focuses on consecutive interpretation from Chinese to English 2. Literature review2.1 Interpretive theoryThe most famous theory on interpretation is the interpretive theory proposed by Danica Seleskovitch; it is firstly developed in the late 1960s in France. This theory maintains the very object of interpreting is to convey the sense of the source language. The interpretative approach is a theory aiming at the non-literary translation and interpretation. They think translation is an explanation of the source text from linguistic symbol combined with the translator's cognition and lay stress on the sense and effect of corresponding equivalence of two languages. The interpretive theory comes from the practices of interpretation, There are three levels of interpreting according to interpretive theory, namely, the lexical level, sentence level and discourse level. What the interpreters should interpret is not the grammar or the sentence but the discourse, the Interpretive Theory laid stress on discourse level, so the interpretation can achieve the equivalence of sense.2.2 SenseSense is the key concept in interpretive theory. According to interpretive theory, sense is the pragmatic meaning of a discourse. As Seleskovitch and Lederer elaborate, "the sense of a speech，or the sense conveyed by the information, does not appear in each word or in each sentence in an obscure way. It is based on linguistic significations but not only the linguistic significations; it is not the summation of linguistic significations but their organic whole"Interpreting should aim at conveying the non-verbal sense instead of the linguistic meaning of the discourse. 2.3 Three stages of interpretingInterpretive theory focuses on the mental and cognitive processes; interpretive theory proposes three stages of comprehension, deverbalization and re-expression. 2.4 Interpretive theory in ChinaMany Chinese scholars also have great achievements with the application of the Interpretive Theory, with the famous representatives of Bao Gang, Cai Xiaohong and Liu Heping. The three have reaped substantial achievements in analyzing interpretation from different perspectives, revealing the internal rules of interpretation and enriching the Interpretive Theory, thus making great contributions to further development of the Interpretive Theory.Altogether, studies on PCI are quite few. Furthermore, there is a lack of study on how to interpret lines of poems, famous sayings or proverbs and allusions, political and other unique economic phrases with Chinese characteristics Therefore, further studies on PCI are necessary. The content of the above thesis mostly about the conference interpretation in the light of Interpretive Theory, but the limitations of the above are they generally introduced the press conference according to the Interpretive Theory, but researched little on the cultural factors of the press conferences. This thesis laid stress on the interpretation of the cultural factors and some frequently-used strategies.These cultural differences between Chinese and English must be taken into consideration while doing interpretation.3. Language, culture and interpretation3.1 Language and cultureCulture is made up of all the treasure created by human, while language is the most outstanding creation of human, as an essential part of culture. Language is the main tool we communicate, which reflects its own culture, spreads its culture and helps the development of other cultures.In short, language is an essential part of culture, which can convey all kinds of culture as a mirror reflecting the culture of a nation. On the other hand, language comes from culture, and is determined by culture. Culture and language cannot be separated. People can know a nation's customs, life styles and the mode of thinking through learning its language. The language communication influenced and restricted by culture. Language is a social phenomenon, the cultural differences of two nations must have some presentation on language. If a person wants to learn a language well, he must know much about its culture.3.2 Interpretation and culture Interpretation is an activity of cross culture communication, the real thing need to translate is the culture, as Wang Zuoliang said "a translator must be a 'cultural person' in a true sense".To be specific, there are several aspects of differences as follows. Firstly, Confucianism has the greatest influence on Chinese, while the culture of English and America comes from the ocean. They have strong interest in astronomy and geography and desire to explore the nature and its law. Secondly，Chinese emphasizes clan and family, but the westerners emphasizes individual. They do anything in their own ways regardless of what others think. They think one man can become a hero who can save the world. Thirdly, Chinese value synthetic thinking while westerners emphasize analytic thinking. The last but not the least, Chinese have the figurative thinking and westerners have logical thinking.Interpretation is not only the interpretation of language but also the interpretation of culture. A culture has its own feature, so the interpretation of language cannot be perfect. In a word, the responsibility of the interpreters is to bridge the gap between two different cultures.3.3 Important factors for interpretersFirstly, interpreters should have cultural quality, a profound knowledge of literature and rich life experiences, especially the knowledge of cultural differences between Chinese and English. Secondly, interpreters shall consider the cultural background of communicative participants. According to IT (interpretive theory), PCI is also a kind of communicative activity. Usually, Chinese addressers tend to use lots of cultural-loaded terms in their expression. For listeners of other cultures, such words are usually difficult to understand. In this situation, interpreters should translate cultural content precisely in a way that is comprehensible to the target listeners.Thirdly, interpreters should deliver the sense of the speakers precisely and correctly.Finally, interpreters should use some interpretation strategies to avoid grammatical mistakes. Interpreters should make full use of conjunctions to make the words of spokesman more smoothly.4. Cases study of cultural factors from PCI4.1 Literal interpretation温家宝面对国际金融危机和欧债危机的蔓延、发展，关键是把我们自己的事情办好。我将在最后一年守职而不废，处义而不回，永远和人民在一起。译文：In face of the deepening international financial crisis and the European debt crisis, what is most important is that we run our own affair well. In my last year in office, I will not waver in carrying out my duties and will remain true to my conviction. Ill always be with the people. Thank you.In China, people usually use“守职而不废，处义而不回”to express one's responsibility and loyalty to his own work, and will not waver or give up even there are some rumors or criticism about him.In this case, the interpreter here simply put the Chinese expression literally and successfully by adopting the interpretive theory in the listeners' minds. Based on the analysis, we can clearly see that literal interpretation is a very important interpreting strategy adopted by interpreters to deal with culture-loaded Chinese expressions.温家宝我秉承“苟利国家生死以，岂因祸福避趋之”的信念，为国家服务整整45年，我为国家、人民倾注了我全部的热情、心血和精力，没有谋过私利。我敢于面对人民、面对历史。知我罪我，其惟春秋。译文：I have devoted 45 years of my life to the service of this country. Remaining committed to the conviction that I shall dedicate myself to the interests of the country and life and death irrespective of personal weal and woe. I have always made outmost efforts with strong passion and energy to serve the country and the people and I have never pursued personal gains. I have the courage to face the people and to face history. They are people who will appreciate what I have done. But there are also people who will criticize me. Ultimately, history will have the final say.In this example, the source language is a Chinese poem and literal interpretation is adopted. The culture-loaded expression interpretation requires interpreter to have a good awareness of Chinese culture. The original expression “苟利国家生死以，岂因祸福趋避之”is a classical poem written by Lin Zexu. The interpreter just translated it to “I shall dedicate myself to the interests of the country and life and death irrespective of personal weal and woe". “知我罪我，其惟春秋” is a famous saying from Mencius, meaning the history will evaluate one's achievement or losses. The interpreter also adopted literal translation. It is not practical to require the interpreter to have a perfect interpretation of the poems on press conference because time is limited. If the interpreter expressed the general sense of the poem correctly according to interpretive theory, it can be regarded as a good interpretation.朱镕基目前我们正在推进国企改革，各国有大中型企业要趁热打铁，巩固改革成果。译文： Now we are pushing the reform of state-owned enterprises. All large and medium-sized companies should take this opportunity and strike the iron while it is hot in order to consolidate the achievements already made in the reform.In the Chinese culture, people usually use the phrase“趁热打铁”to express the idea that someone should take the advantage of an opportunity or seize the right moment to do something. Fortunately, in English, we have the similar expression which has the same meaning, "strike the iron while it is hot". In this case, the interpreter here simply put the Chinese expression literally and successfully in the English cultural background. Based on the analysis, we can clearly see that literal interpretation can deal with many culture-loaded Chinese expressions. 4.2 Borrowing 温家宝冰冻三尺非一日之寒，我们今天所取得的成绩是改革开放二十多年来全体中国人民共同努力的结果。译文： Rome was not built in one day. The achievements we have made today should be attributed to the joint efforts of all Chinese people over more than twenty years of reform and opening up.In this case the interpreter successfully adopted borrowing translation. The old Chinese saying“冰冻三尺非一日之寒”, which means it takes many cold days freezing the river three feet thick, is quite similar to the English saying "Rome was not built in one day". If the expression is literally translated, the main idea of the sentence is hard to deliver. We can clearly see that both cultures have their images to express the same sense in different ways. Obviously, the interpreter has a very good knowledge of the two cultures , so he simply borrowed the corresponding expression in English "Rome was not built in one day". Borrowing is a very good interpreting strategy to deal with this kind of culture-loaded expressions.温家宝我说中印两国友好的时间有2000多年，可以说占99.9%，两国的冲突的时间很短，不到0.1%。即使这个冲突，也己化干戈为玉帛。译文： I told him that the duration of time when China and India enjoys friendly relations stretched 2000 years, or 99.9% of the total of our interactions. In terms of the conflict, the conflict between our two countries only lasted two years, or less than 0.1% of the total time of our interactions. Even in the case of conflicts we would always beat swords to ploughs.In this example, the Chinese culture-loaded expression “化干戈为玉帛”is translated into the English idiom "beat swords to ploughs". In Chinese, “干戈” refers to the weapons in ancient China, while“玉帛”literally means jade objects and silk fabrics presented as tribute. Therefore, the meaning conveyed by“化干戈为玉帛”is to turn hostility into friendship or to war into peace. However, the interpreter put it into "beat swords to ploughs", it is a borrowing, because he knows very well of the English cultural background and language.4.3 Addition温家宝 我是一个