A Corpus-based Study Of Explicitation In The Chinese-English Translation Of The National Defense White Papers Of China

By applying theories such as Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS), Corpus Linguistics, Corpus-based Translation Studies (CTS) etc., this thesis probes into the phenomenon of explicitation as a translation universal in the Chinese-English Translation of the National Defense White Papers of China (referred to as the White Papers hereafter) on the basis of a self-built corpus.Chapter one is a general introduction. Several important theories relevant to this research and some fundamental information of the National Defense White Papers of China are briefly introduced. The aim of the study and the organization of the thesis are also included in this chapter.Chapter two is the literature review, which focuses on corpus-based translation studies with its theoretical background and relevant corpus typology. Descriptive translation studies and corpus linguistics are reviewed before as"two main sources of influence and inspiration to corpus-based translation studies"(Laviosa, 2002, p. 5). Then, literature about Translation Universals, especially explicitation and explicitation in translation between Chinese and English was reviewed in this chapter.Chapter three first explains that cohesive devices are very important to the cohesion and coherence of discourse. And since conjunctions have distinct status among cohesive devices, the study of conjunctive explicitation has its realistic significance in the interpretation of discourses. After that some research questions and the corpus resources used in this research are introduced. Chapter four shows the results of the empirical study based on corpus methodologies. Then taking the study of explicitation in the translation of National Defense White Papers as a starting point, it further reflects on the relationship between translation and several sociocultural factors, such as politics, ideology and power.Chapter six is the conclusion of this thesis. In order to be helpful to future studies, the merits and limits of this research are also discussed in this chapter.As an important element contributing to the overall cohesion and coherence of discourses, the study of cohesive explicitation is of special value and has drawn the attention from many scholars. Three types of conjunctions were selected for the empirical study, namely conditional, adversative and causal conjunctions. The results of the research indicate that there is a general tendency of explicitation in their translations.However, the study did not stop on the linguistic level, which would actually render the statistics from the corpus methodology meaningless. In order to view the analysis of explicitation in the translation of the White Papers from a practical perspective, the thesis then discussed the role of sociocultural factors in translation and claimed that as a translation strategy explicitation in translation makes the translated texts more cohesive and easier to understand. So, the explicitation in the translation of the White Papers will contribute to the efforts of Chinese Armed Forces to better communicate with the world and set up their own image as a powerful force, a civilized force and a force loving peace.The research innovatively combined the corpus methodology and qualitative analysis to study explicitation in the translation of the White Papers of National Defense. Nevertheless, the limitations of this research and suggestions for further study were also described at the end of the thesis.