Research On The Japanese Translation Of The "Report Of The 19th National Congress Of The Communist Party Of China" From The Perspective Of Figure-background Theory

Political documents serve as the written carrier of national and local governmental policies on politics,economy and culture,is the most authoritative channel for other countries to understand the national conditions of a country.Xi Jinping's Report at 19^th National Congress of the Communist Party of China(hereinafter referred to as the 19^th Congress Report) is not only an important part of the political documents of our country,but also one of the most representative and overarching political documents of our Party in the new era.It has laid the political basis for many subsequent political documents.Since its publication,the official translation of the 19^th Congress Report has attracted widespread attention for two reasons.The first one is that the report itself is of great significance.It systematically summarizes the historical achievements made by the party and the country in the past five years,and expounds the principles,policies and major strategic measures of our country.The second one is that translation of foreign publicity is increasingly important,as it to a large extent determines the effectiveness of foreign publicity work.High-quality translation is not only a direct reflection of the national image,but also an important way to promote the country's voice in the international community.Research into the translation strategies employed in the 19^th Congress Report will provide reference for further researches into the Japanese translation of other political documents.The 19^th Congress Report entails the typical characteristics of political documents:objectiveness,preciseness and conciseness in sentence patterns and discourse structures.Based on the“Figure-Ground”Theory and focusing on the syntactic level,this paper makes a comparative research into the Chinese and Japanese versions of the 19^th Congress Report.By reviewing the existing researches into the Japanese translation of the 19^th Congress Report and other political documents,the paper finds three deficiencies in the research of sentence patterns:Firstly,there is a lack of researches into the characteristics of verb-object phrases and the corresponding Chinese-to-Japanese?C-J?translation strategies.For example,some verb-object phrases are not translated into the verb expression form of?N?V????according to the word order in Chinese,but into the noun expression form of?N?VN?in Japanese,which has been neglected in previous researches.Secondly,former researches failed to figure out the necessary conditions for translating Chinese active sentences into Japanese passive ones.Thirdly,though some researches have proposed that logical relation words should be supplemented in translating Chinese sentences with hidden logical relations into Japanese ones.But they have never suggested the necessary conditions for adding these logical relation words in the translation process.It can be seen that most current researches merely have summarized the corresponding translation strategies based on the differences between Chinese and Japanese languages,but have neglected cognitive motivation of using such strategies.Therefore,this paper focuses on the way of handling the following three typical sentence patterns in C-J translation from a cognitive perspective.1.Referentiated Verb-Object Phrases.Chinese referentiaing of verbs is hierarchical.According to the loss of verb's features and the acquisition of noun's features in the process of referentiating,it can be divided into three types:specific event referentiating,generic event referentiating and reificated event referentiating.Among them,the Verb-Object Phrase's referentiaing include specific event referentiating and generic event referentiating.The difference between the two is that the former has a definite internal endpoint while the latter has no definite endpoint.On the cognitive level,to translate the source language into the verb expression?N?V????is to emphasize the action process and implies the endpoint,which is equivalent to specific event referentiating.In contrast,the process of translating the source language into the noun expression?N?V N?is equivalent to generic event referentiating,with its verbal features weakened and no internal endpoints contained.After probing into the characteristics of the Verb-Object phrases that have been translated into the noun expression?N?V N?in the 19^thCongress Report,this paper finds that these cases all belong to generic event referentiating and therefore are translated in such a way,rather than into the verb expression?N?V????.Such translation results are more congruent with the source-language text.2.Unmarked Patient-Subject Sentence.A considerable number of active sentences in the19^th Congress Report are unmarked patient-subject sentences,which are active in form but passive in meaning with the following characteristics:1)the subject is the patient of the predicate verb;2)the subject is usually unanimate or abstract;3)rather than being composed of bare verbs,the predicate is usually accompanied by additional components;4)absence of the agent is allowed;5)semantically,it does not indicate the changes in behavior or action,but emphasizes changes in state or the results of changes.This type of sentences usually emphasizes changes in state or the results of changes,featuring the structure of“Np?patient?+adverb?to indicate degree or manner?+V”.According to the“Figure-Ground”theory,the patient is the focus and will be foregrounded as the“F?Figure?”,while the agent is implicit and will enter the cognitive domain as the“G?Ground?”,the purpose of which is to make the changes in state or the results of changes become salient.After analysis,it is found that most such sentences in the19^th Congress Report are translated into passive sentences or intransitive sentences,both of which can give the patient the role of the“F”and the agent the role of the“G”and therefore make the results of the changes salient.Yet one thing to note is that the employment of passive sentences will be more cognitively appropriate because in such sentences implicity of agents can be achieved.3.Unmarked Causal Complex Sentence.For the purpose of conciseness,logical relation words are often omitted in political documents,giving rise to the so-called“unmarked causal complex sentences”with no logical words in the sentence structure but clear causal relationship or purpose relationship in the meaning.In terms of the relationship between the subordinate clause P and the main clause Q,this paper sums up three conditions for the establishment of the unmarked causal complex sentence in the 19^th Congress Report,namely reason-dependence,judgment-dependence and modality-dependence.In the case of reason-dependence in which P is an established fact,causal relationship or purpose relationship can be identified between P and Q according to the truth,common sense,objective facts or social status quo.In the case of judgment-dependence,P is an objective established fact and Q is the speaker's subjective conjecture,judgment or evaluation based on these facts.In the case of modality-dependence,P mostly represents an established fact when indicating a causal relationship,and a goal or motive when indicating a purpose relationship.In either cases,Q will contain such words as“may,must,should,etc.”to indicate possibility,necessity and affirmation.Eligibility of any one of the above three conditions will clarify the logical relationship between P and Q based on the Chinese contents.Therefore,logical relation words are often absent in unmarked complex sentences.According to the sequence principle and cause-result principle of“Figure-Ground”theory,the cause item happens before the result item,and the purpose item guides the action item in unmarked causal complex sentences.Therefore,the cause item or purpose item is the subordinate clause,and the result item or action item is the main clause,which means that P is the“G”while the salient Q is the“F”.In Japanese,if no corresponding continuation words or continuation auxiliary words are used,P and Q will be prone to be identified as parallel structures and thus become the“foreground”together.Only by adding logical relation words and pulling P back to the“G”position can Q be salient as an“F”.Therefore,in C-J translation of most unmarked causal complex sentences in the 19th Congress Report,logical relation words are added to make the logical relationship explicit.This paper probes into the syntactic features of the referentiated Verb-Object phrases,unmarked Patient-Subject sentences and unmarked causal complex sentences in the 19^th Congress Report in terms of the“Figure-Ground”theory in cognitive linguistics.Based on that,syntactic differences between the original text and the Japanese translation and their respective cognitive motivations are explored,so as to shed light on the characteristics and rules of translating such texts in the future and provide new perspectives for further studies.