Comparing English And German Translations Of The Government Work Report

As a common form in Chinese,the four-character structures are characterized by their linguistic conciseness and rhythmic beauty.The author studies the translation strategies of them in the English and German translations of The Government Work Reports(GWR)from the year 2020 to 2022.This study adopts Vermeer’s Skopos Theory to analyze 25 representative cases.In this study,the open function in Python’s built-in IO feature was used for automated text processing in UTF-8 encoding mode,and then the segmentation analysis tool Jieba was used.The findings reveal that while both translations conform to the Skopos and Coherence principles,the English translation places greater emphasis on achieving the intended purpose than on maintaining the exact structure and form of the original language,while the German translation prioritizes fidelity to the form and meaning of the original text.It has been observed that the English version often modifies the word order in the translation of modifier-head structures,whereas the German version tends to maintain the original word order.In contrast,an opposite approach has been taken to translate predicate-complement structures.In the case of subject-predicate structures,both English and German translations have shown a propensity for literal translations.As for the translation of predicate-object and conjunction-predicate structures,the English version is characterized by a higher level of flexibility and brevity,whereas the German version prioritizes a more elaborate expression.In terms of parallel structures,English translations tend to merge information and reduce the number of words,whereas German translations exhibit a tendency to focus more on the restoration of details.