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The concept of explicitation is first proposed by French scholars Vinay and Datbelnet, referring to the translation strategy of making the implied meaning in the ST more explicit in the TT. However, it is difficult to have access to on-the-spot interpretation because most interpreters have self-protection awareness and many conferences are of high confidentiality, let alone the transcription is also a heavy task. As a result, few scholars pay attention to the explicitation in interpretation. In terms of Chinese and English language pair, SI is paid much more attention to than CI. Drawing on the framework of explicitation formulated by Hu & Zhu (2008: 72-80), this study selects Premier’s press conferences from 2008 to 2019 to build a Chinese-English Press Conference Interpreting Corpus (abbreviated as CEPCIC) in order to figure out the explicitation functions and explicitation strategies with the help of ParaConc, Antconc and SPSS. What’s more, a case study is conducted by examining the English corpuses in 2009, 2011 and 2013, and more detailed examples are further analyzed to identify different explicitation strategies used by different
interpreters and to reveal motivations that underlie the interpreter’s resorting to explicitation strategies. It is found that there are three types of explicitation in C-E CI, i.e. explicitation of ideational function, explicitation of interpersonal function and explicitation of textual function. The most frequently used explicitation strategies are the addition or substitution of participants, engagement contents and connectives. And
motivations for an interpreter to use explicitation come from overcoming linguistic differences between Chinese and English, coping with the constraints in C-E CI, and seeking optimal relevance by explaining or adding the source information, reinforcing
the attitude of the speaker, and restating his attitude or stance.