On The C-E Translation Of Government Work Report From The Perspective Of Constructivist Translatology

The annual GWR, given by our Premier of the State Council at the National People’s Congress, is the work summary and work arrangements made by Chinese government to its people. It is the most authoritative source of information for foreigners to know China’s latest condition and development trend for it covers the areas of economy, politics, culture, education, medical treatment and all the other aspects of social life in China. English is the most widely spoken language in the world. Therefore the C-E translation of GWR shoulders the responsibility of transmitting messages about China around the world so that foreigners can gain a better understanding about the national conditions, policies, culture and other aspects of the country under the context that China’s international position has been greatly rising. It is no exaggeration to say that the quality of C-E translation of GWR determines whether the policy of China can be correctly comprehended and directly reflects the overall educational and cultural level of our country.It is not until the very beginning of the21st century that the study of C-E translation of GWR has gradually attracted the attention of scholars. However, most of them discussed GWR translation by their own rich personal experience, or came up with some solutions in terms of the difficulties in GWR translation, without any theoretical support. The thesis holds that whether the C-E translation of GWR accurately reflects the basic condition of China, whether it conforms to the reading habits of the target readers and whether it respects the framework of ST directly determines the quality of communicative effect. From this point of view, constructivist translatology provides a suitable theoretical support for the study of C-E translation of GWR. It is based on Harbermas’s ideas of communicative rationality and guided by the thoughts of constructivism. Constructive translation paradigm is a more reasonable paradigm for it is based on the reflection of the previous paradigms in Chinese translation studies. In terms of constructivist translatology, the meaning of a text is neither self-existent nor unchanged, it can only be deepened with the development of social and historical practice. We should let translation meet the following three translation principles under constructivist translatology:1) translation should not be against the objectivity of knowledge;2) translation should be of rational understanding and valid interpretation;3) translation should conform to the directionality of the original text. When applied to C-E translation of GWR, translators need to have a deep understanding of the basic conditions of China, to make the translation comply with the reading habits of target readers and to reproduce in the target language the stylistic features of the original text to ensure the optimal communicative effect. The thesis tries to make a thorough and systematic study of the C-E translation of GWR from the perspective of constructivist translatology, which was first put forward by Professor Lv Jun in his book Translatology:A Constructivist Perspective of Translation Studies, Hou Xiangqun being the other author. By using constructivist translatology put forward by Lv Jun as the theoretical foundation, the thesis makes a sound discussion about the construction of C-E translation of GWR ranging from2001to2012at the lexical and syntactic level. The main purpose of the thesis is to construct better translation which will be more acceptable on the part of the target readers. As to those translations which are somewhat unsatisfactory from the perspective of constructivist translatology, the author suggests another substitutive translation for discussion. From all these analysis and judgments, the author concludes that constructivist translatology is practical and workable in guiding the C-E translation of GWR. The C-E GWR constructed under the guidance of constructivist translatology is far more readable and acceptable in terms of the target readers. Thus China is bound to be better understood and leaves a good impression all over the world.