On Equivalence Translation Of Government Work Report

With the improvement of its comprehensive national strength and its international status, China is now increasingly remarkable in the international arena. Meanwhile, there is an increasingly keen desire from the outside world to learn more about China. As a mouthpiece of the Chinese government, the government work report, either national or local, consisting of looking back on the past achievements and putting forward future plans, has always been attracting the most worldwide attention. Starting from the western translation equivalence theory, the author intends to make a preliminary study of the translation of government work report in the current Chinese international communication, aiming to find out the underlying translation principles and some effective translation strategies and techniques in this area. This thesis is a qualitative study with data proof as a whole. It initiates with a comprehensive review of the literatures concerned with the major western equivalence theories, relevant theories in communication, translation and culture, and the current research and development of the translation of Chinese international communication materials. Based on these reviews and in the light of the western equivalence theory, the author makes a detailed analysis of the Chinese to English version of the five government work reports from 2000 to 2004. The analysis is made from three dimensions, lexical, syntactic, and textual, with greater emphasis on the lexical level since words contains the finest nuances of meanings for government work reports. On each level, various kinds of translation equivalence are proposed and analyzed. Methods of observation and exemplification are applied. To make the study more comprehensive and convincing, certain parameters have been under statistics. Through the three-dimensioned analysis, it is concluded that the translation of government work report is quite different from that of other international communication materials. The underlying translation principles include accuracy, over-faithfulness, completeness, continuity and adaptation, intelligibility and naturalness. This thesis provides a comprehensive and detailed analysis and elaborated generalization of the translation practice of national government work report. Implicatures and limitations are also provided at the end of the thesis.