A Study On Translating Expressions With Chinese Characteristics From A Cultural Perspective

The report on the work of the government is a form of official document of the government of the People’s Republic of China.All levels of government must issue the report to the presidium of the local People’s Congress and the Political Consultative Conference(commonly known as the “two conferences”)held every year,the deputies to the National People’s Congress and the CPPCC members.The main contents of the report are the review of the work in one year and the tasks in that year.As the largest developing country in the world,China’s governance policy and social development status attract worldwide attention.The on-site interpretation at the government report conference has become an important way of China’s foreign publicity and dialogue with the world.In recent years,Bassnett’s cultural translation theory has set off a new wave of translation studies.Different from the traditional translation studies from the perspective of linguistic theory,the cultural translation view holds that translation is to transform the local culture from the macro level;the relationship between culture and language,just like human body and internal organs,is inseparable,so culture is the basic unit of translation,not words,sentences and languages.At the annual government work report conference,there are many expressions with Chinese cultural characteristics.These expressions involve a wide range of contents and rich cultural connotations,so the English translation of these contents has naturally attracted the public’s attention.However,from the perspective of Bassnett’s cultural translation view,to investigate and elaborate the translation behavior will make us translate the expressions better,and we will,to cultural translation itself,produce a more profound and thorough understanding.The research object of this paper is the expression of Chinese cultural characteristics in the English version of the on-site interpretation of the report on the work of the government of the State Council in 2019.The perspective of analysis is Professor Bassnett’s cultural translation concept.After research and investigation,the author divides the expressions with Chinese characteristics in this report into four categories: abbreviations of figures with Chinese characteristics,Chinese quadra-syllabic idioms,Chinese culture-loaded words and sentences without subject.After analysis and summary,the author believes that from the perspective of Bassnett’s cultural translation view,in order to achieve the cultural function equivalence of the source text in the target culture,the translator will give full play to his subjective initiative,mainly adopting the method of retaining cultural image andreplacing cultural image to realize the cultural care of the two languages,and then to produce cross-cultural communication.