The Reconstruction of Modality in Chinese-English Government Press Conference Interpreting by Xin Li

Author:Xin Li
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789811051692
Publisher: Springer Singapore

The ST of Example 19 is a speech segment of Premier Wen Jiabao in 2012 addressing a journalist’s inquiry about the target of the recent round of housing market regulation and whether it would be “abandoned halfway” under the economic pressure. Followed by two strong statements “房价还远远没有回到合理价位” (“the home price in China is far from coming back to a reasonable level”) and “调控不能放松” (“we must not slack our efforts in regulating the housing sector”), this statement “应该鼓励更多的人租房” is meant to convey the Chinese government’s attitude towards whether it is necessary for everyone in China to purchase a house. On the surface, it is a statement of the government’s obligation to “encourage people to rent homes”, but what it implies is the government’s actual attitude of “encouraging people to rent homes”, which would help bring down the housing price. By translating the obligation modal 应该 into the inclination modal will, the interpreter turns the statement of obligation with an implied performative force into an offer that the government is making to the audience. Compared with the literal transition “we should encourage more people to rent homes”, the TT above is more relevant to the journalist’s question and therefore it would sound more sincere and responsive to the English-speaking audience.

Example 20 is the interpreting case of Premier Li Keqiang’s speech segment in 2014 on the same housing issue. In response to the journalist’s inquiry about “new ideas and measures of the government taken on this issue”, Premier Li uses the obligation marker 需要 to state the government’s obligation to “build more government-subsidized housing”, which also implies the government’s inclination to do so. The literal translation with its equivalent form need to would have conveyed the ST message adequately into the TT, because the English obligation marker need to can also imply the government’s inclination. But the interpreter renders it into the inclination marker will, so the statement of obligation becomes a clear offer, which again sounds more responsive and more appealing to the audience.

Second, most of the translation cases involving the modality shift of “O-P” occur either with “zero-subject” clauses, or with implicit passive-voice clauses in the ST. With the obligation marker in the ST rendered into the probability marker will in the TT, the statement of the obligation is turned into a prediction or estimation. For example:(21) ST: 我估计明年可能还需要再发1500亿。

[LT: I estimate that we may need to issue another 150 billion RMB yuan of treasury bonds next year.]

TT: And I expect that in the next year, maybe another 150 billion RMB yuan of treasury bonds will be issued.

(22) ST: 比方说, 我们的个人的所得税制, 最多的应该交45%的税, 也就是他的收入的一半应该交给国家。

[LT: For instance, according to our personal income tax policy, the highest tax rate should be 45%. In other words, half of his income should be submitted to the country.]

TT: For instance, the highest tax rate for personal income tax can be as high as 45%. In other words, nearly half of the personal income will be turned over as tax.

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