Discourse Analysis Of The Translation Norms Of Chinese State Leaders' Works And Their Changes

Major historical periods of China,including the revolution and construction period(1927-1976),the initial stage of reform and opening up(1978-1990s)and the new era of reform and opening up,have witnessed China as a major country with global influence.Any change in its domestic and foreign policies might,to some extent,affect world situation and the benefits of certain countries.It thus receives attention from the rest of the world.They obtain information about China's policies and philosophy of governance through the translated works of state leaders,as one of the major channels.Their understanding of the works,and even their attitudes toward China,might be influenced by the faithfulness of translation,and by the way of handling linguistic and cultural differences as well as political factors in the process of translation.Chinese state leaders' works have been translated into other languages for nearly one hundred years.It would be meaningful to trace the history of these translation activities and evaluate their quality and effects,with a view of offering guidance for the translation of political literature at present and for the future.This dissertation,by taking Selected Works of Mao Tze-tung,Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping and Xi Jinping: the Governance of China as its object of research,intends to reconstruct the translation norms of Chinese state leaders' works and their evolvement,and discover the features and regularities of these translating activities so as to offer guidance for the present translators of political literature.Critical Discourse Analysis(CDA),aiming to explore the interaction between language and society,shares profound common ground with(studies of)translation norms in terms of philosophical tendency,academic vision and research approach.In view of this,this dissertation,by absorbing core notions and frameworks of CDA,proposes a discourse analysis framework of translations norms,in an attempt to be effective in constructing the translation norms of Chinese state leaders' works and analyze the mechanism in which social factors affect these translation activities.To be specific,this dissertation,by reclassifying Toury's norms into “operational norms”and “social norms” and absorbing Fairclough's CDA framework,proposes its own analytical framework.This framework consists of three steps.Firstly,make an adequate description of the translation strategies of titles,metaphors,words and annotations,in an attempt to find out regularities of the translation strategies,which are then used as the basis for constructing operational norms.Secondly,reconstruct four social norms: translating institution,foreign policy,ethics and ideology,and analyze the ways social factors affect translation of political literature.Thirdly,analyze the order of the above norms,in terms of: hierarchy of norms,i.e.mainstream norms,new norms and previous norms co-existing in each of the three works and the times in which the works were written;binding force of norms,i.e.on the one hand,which norm(s)are more powerful when in conflict with each other,and on the other hand,which of source-language-oriented norms and target-language-oriented norms are more binding;notion of “correct” translation,i.e.the standard of “correct”translation;and the evolvement of hierarchy,binding force and notion of “correct”translation.This dissertation,after analyzing the micro-level translation strategies,the macro-level social background and the middle-level mechanism,has four findings.Firstly,the ethics of national interests are the strongest norm among all the translation norms of Chinese state leaders' works.Secondly,the translation norms of Chinese state leaders' works are not absolutely binding,each with some exceptions.Thirdly,source-language-oriented norms tend to be less binding as time heads on,but are more binding than target-language-oriented norms all the time.Fourthly,the norms of Chinese state leaders' works and their hierarchy are dynamic,and so is the notion of“correct” translation.They are constructed by social factors.The dissertation is innovative in three aspects.The first is theoretical innovation: it proposes the notion of translation norms order and the discourse analysis framework of translation norms.The second is its innovative finding: the ethics of national interests are the strongest norm among all the translation norms of Chinese state leaders' works.The third is its innovative theoretical perspective: it explores the similarities between translation norms studies and CDA in a interdisciplinary way,and puts forward the CDA approach to translation norms studies.The dissertation is theoretically significant,for it has enriched the theory of translation norms and expanded the theory's effectiveness from the traditional field of literature to the field of political works.It may also offer guidance for translators and translation institutions in their present and future translation of state leaders' works.