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The Interpretative Theory, also named the Interpretative Approach and the Theory of Sense, is the first systemic theory about interpretation. It is a theory closely related to practice, a theory that was created from interpreting practice and in turn contributes to interpreting performances. It was once the leading interpretation theory in the world and still is the main-stream theory in the West on interpretation. Thus, researches about Chinese-English interpretation cannot do without any reference to the Interpretative Theory. What the paper is going to do is to introduce some knowledge about Interpretative Theory and interpretation activity, to analyze the on-spot Chinese-English interpretation materials from Interpretative Theory’s point of view. With the help of the research, the author intends to show the requirements of efficient interpretation from Interpretative Theory’s perspective and offer guidance for proper and good Chinese-English interpretation.
2 Interpretative Theory
It is known to all that a theory comes from practice and in turn contributes to the perfection of the practice. Thus, only when a theory is closely relevant to practice can it be serviceable. Interpretative Theory is just such a theory which was founded by Professor Danica Seleskovitch in the late 1960s in France.
2.1 Origin of the Interpretative Theory
The Interpretative Theory (le theorie de l’interpretation), also named the Interpretative Approach and the Theory of Sense, was born in France. Coming into being in late 1960s it is an approach to interpretation and Non-literary Texts translation.
ESIT (Ecole Superieure d’Interpretes et de Traducteurs), also referred to as the “Paris School”, is the cradle of the Interpretative Theory. ESIT was founded in October, 1957, and was the first institution of higher education to confer Master and Doctorate of Translation and Interpreting. Danica Seleskovitch (1921-2001), the first president of ESIT, is a renowned French interpreter and interpreting theorist. She was interpreter for President Charles de Gaulle and other heads of state. With rich interpreting experience and years’ hard work, she published her doctoral dissertation, l’interprete dans les conferences internationales, problemes de langage et de communication (《口译技巧》), which marked the birth of Interpretative Theory.
In 1984, Danica Seleskovitch, together with Marianne Lederer co-authored the Interpreter pour Traduire (《释意翻译》) (see Guo Lanying, 2007:6), which marked the establishment of the Interpretative Theory. This book, with the help of research findings in fields of linguistics, logics, and psychology, clarified the procedures of comprehension and expression in interpretation. In this book, the two authors also suggested the fundamental rules of consecutive interpretation and simultaneous interpretation by comparing translation in oral form with that in written form. The publication of La Traduction aujourd’hui—le modele interpretatif (《释意学派口笔译理论》) by Lederer in 1994 indicated the perfection of the Interpretative Theory.
The Interpretative Theory contends that interpreting is a communication, not simply a linguistic behavior. This theory was once the dominant theory in interpretation arena and has put great influence on interpreting training.
2.2 Target of Interpretation
According to Interpretative Theory, translation is not a unidirectional decoding operation, but a dynamic process in which the interpreter understands the source message and reformulates the message in the target language. It is a communicative action with the purpose of conveying communicative meaning.
The Interpretative Theory holds that there are there levels of interpreting: lexical level, sentence level and discourse level. Interpreting on lexical level is what we refer to as word-for-word interpreting, which can only result in correspondence. Interpreting on sentence level means to interpret the meaning of a sentence regardless of the communication context. Interpreting on discourse level, however, is the interpretation of meaning which is the combination of the linguistic meaning and cognitive knowledge. The first two levels of interpreting are nothing but trans-coding, while the last one can reach the aim of interpreting—to establish the equivalence of communicative sense between discourses in the source and target languages. Briefly, Lederer calls the former two levels of interpreting as linguistic interpreting (语言翻译) while the latter one as interpretative interpreting(释意翻译) (see Lederer, 2001:5).