A Study On C-E Translation Principles Of Government Documents

With China's deeper reform and opening up, Chinese government documents are playing an increasingly important role in the international communication. A sound translation of these documents contributes a lot to different ideologies and values of communication among countries.A comparative study has been made on 30 Chinese government documents and their respective translations from the websites of the Central Government of the PRC, Shanghai Municipal People's Government, Tianjin Municipal People's Government, Sichuan Provincial People's Government, Hangzhou Municipal People's Government, Ningbo Municipal People's Government and Shaoxing Municipal People's Government. The author has found many problems in the current C-E translation of government documents on government websites at different levels, which affect the international image of Chinese governments as well as the communication among different ideologies. These problems mainly fall into seven types:(1) Lack of political awareness; (2) Inconsistency of proper names; (3) Inaccurate transmission of the original information; (4) Defects in the translation of cultural expressions; (5) Poor translation of four-character phrases; (6) Redundancy; (7) Inaccurate collocation. These problems result in the misunderstanding or even distortion on some policies. Many statements in government documents are extremely delicate and involve national interest and governments'willpower. If the translation of these documents is improper, it may even threaten the national sovereignty. Therefore, a study on C-E translation of government documents is badly needed to solve these problems.Guided by the Skopos Theory of German Functionalist School, the thesis has proposed some principles and strategies to overcome the problems in the current C-E translation of government documents. Considering that "redundancy" and "inaccurate collocation" are common in the translation of other fields and they are mainly caused by the translator's translation ability, the thesis focuses on solving the first five problems.According to Skopos Theory, the skopos rule enjoys the highest priority. The translator is entitled to apply different translation principles and strategies according to different skopos. Upon the analysis of the previous five problems, the thesis has proposed three principles to overcome these problems:(1) Manifesting ideology; (2) Dynamic consistency and fidelity; (3) Cultural equivalence and cultural individuality. Considering that Chinese government documents are full of four-character phrases and the translation of these phrases leaves much to be improved, the thesis has proposed three modes to improve the quality of the translation:(1) Translating phrases of parallel structures with verb (+preposition)+noun; (2) Translating phrases in which the last two characters show the purpose of the first two characters with verb (+ noun)+to (+verb)+noun; (3) Translating phrases in which the last two characters have the same meaning as the first two characters with one adjective or one adverb.Through example analysis and translation practice, the research has proved that with the guidance of these principles and modes, the C-E translation of government documents has been improved in various aspects including accuracy, preciseness and the manifestation of ideologies.