A Study On The English Translation Of The Government Work Report

This thesis offers a detailed analysis of the translation of the government work report at the Fifth Session of the Ninth National People's Congress on March 5, 2002. By integrating achievements in translation studies, the thesis aims at applying translation theories to practice and putting forward some useful translation techniques. The thesis is composed of "fiVe. chapters.The first chapter gives a general survey of China's traditional translation theories and the western theories. In the traditional Chinese theories, the principle of "faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance" put forward by Yan Fu has exerted a great impact on the translation activities in China. The western translation theories include the recent concept of domestication vs. foreignization, which is briefly discussed here and will be further illustrated with translation examples in Chapter Two. In the author's opinion, the dichotomy of domestication vs. foreignization seems similar to that of free translation vs. literal translation. The difference, if there is any, may lie in the cultural background. The former is more suitable for analysis of cross-cultural communication, and may contribute more to the sharpening of the translator's cultural awareness. Furthermore, some stylistic features of the government work report are also expounded in this chapter.In the second chapter, analyses are made from the angle of lexicon. The choice of words is important for accurate conveyance of the meaning in the original text. Therefore, great efforts are made to discuss the lexical accuracy and proper tone. Also discussed are the translation techniques of ellipsis and supplement as well as the special treatment of Chinese slogans. It is worth noting that in the government work report many slogans appear for the purpose of smooth reading and easy memorizing. In translating these slogans, great care is needed to decide whether the domestication or foreignization method should be adopted. Generally speaking, for things that are unique to China and with no equivalents outside China, the foreignization method is often preferred to represent the uniqueness. With regardir'to things that have their origins in foreign countries and are introduced into China, the domestication method is more desirable.Chapter Three deals with the tense and structure of the translation. The choice of tense and modal auxiliary is discussed first. For the description of the achievements and shortcomings in the previous year, the simple past tense can be used, for it can appropriately describes events that happened in the past. For the parts concerning the future work, the future tense is employed. As regards the subtitles, the -ING participle is more suitable rather than the infinitive form without "to". Also discussed are ways of treating short sentences, long sentences and zero-subject sentences. After that, the rearrangement and balance of the sentence structure as well as the word order are elaborated with a view to achieving the optimized rendition.Chapter Four, mainly based on the functional grammar by Halliday, is devoted to discourse analysis of the report and its translation, including cohesion and information arrangement. The former is expounded in three aspects, namely, reference, conjunction and repetition. The latter is concerned with end focus and end weight. To produce a well-organized English version, proper cohesive devices and reasonable information distribution are indispensable.Chapter Five deals with of special ways of treatment in translation. The original text may sometimes contain special expressions, which require special treatments. For instance, conciseness is a principle in translation. Also, some expressions may convey vague meanings, which sometimes need to be made concrete and specific, and sometimes call for preservation of the original vagueness. The vivid images conveyed in the original text also deserve flexible treatment. Apart from these, set English phrases should be chosen to stand for some fixed Chinese phrases for t...