Analysis Of The Translation Of Culture-loaded Words In Government Work Reports From The Perspective Of Foreignization And Domestication

After more than three decades of reform and opening up, China has risen to the central stage in the international arena with its upgrading of comprehensive national power. Consequently, there is an urgent need for this country to introduce its core values, traditions and culture to the world since these are in many respects still unfamiliar to most foreigners. Consequently, China is determined to strengthen its communication and exchange with the outside world so as to lessen the misunderstandings from other peoples.As the media of cultural transmission, the translation of Chinese ideas into English undoubtedly plays a crucial role for foreigners to grasp more information about China. In C-E (Chinese-English) translation, the proper rendering of culture-loaded words is a daunting task for translators and is also extremely pivotal for the appropriate transmission of Chinese images, especially in sensitive political documents.In this thesis, I will first give a brief introduction to the origin and development of foreignization and domestication in the West and China and define the culture-loaded words in political documents, which are classified into three categories:political and ideological terms, current expressions, and Chinese idioms and sayings. Then, I will examine which translation strategy, namely domestication or foreignization as proposed by Venuti (1995), has primarily been adopted in the translation of these culture-loaded words. Subsequently, I will make a case study of the translation in the 2010 government work report from a cross-cultural perspective and summarize the general features and tendency in the translation of such words. After that, a comparative study will be made to investigate the C-E translation of culture-loaded words in three consecutive (2000,2005, 2010) government work reports as well as the proportions of the two translation strategies applied in them. I will pinpoint the words which have appeared twice or more in the three reports and discuss the variations in the translation strategy. Finally, I will expound upon the reasons for the choices of the foreignization translation strategy and the variations in translating the same words. Hopefully, it might shed light to the translation of culture-loaded words in general and be helpful to the translators engaged in the translation of political documents.