Translation Of English Public Speeches

This thesis studies the translation of English public speeches from the perspective of stylistic analysis. There are lots of papers and books which concentrate on analyzing the linguistic features of English public speeches, and there are many kinds of translated versions of the same public speech. These are favorable conditions for the present study. This thesis aims to explore the translation of English public speeches by employing stylistic analysis, i.e. to evaluate and compare several translated versions of the original text from three aspects—its vocabulary, syntax and rhetoric, by considering the stylistic characteristics of certain text types from the perspective of foregrounding..The author briefly summarizes the stylistic studies in the West and in China. Scholars both in the West and in China have been attaching great importance to stylistic studies from early times. However, strictly speaking, the true stylistics was born in modern times. Its birth is on the basis of the development of linguistics, literature and some other humanities. Though few scholars do some research in this field, yet this thesis tries to do some tentative studies on translation on the basis of this subject in this field.How to apply stylistic analysis to translation study is the focal point of this thesis. The author first points out the definitions of stylistic analysis and the different types of stylistic analyses and then discusses how to apply stylistic analysis to translation criticism.After solving the problem of connecting stylistic analysis with translation studies, the author talks about the translation of English public speeches. In order to better explain the relationship between English public speeches and stylistic analysis, the author firstly makes a brief survey of the history of western public speeches and then talks about the linguistic features of English public speeches and at last points out some problems prevailing in previous studies on the translation of English public speeches from the perspective of stylistic analysis. As an attempt of the application of theories, the author takes the three Chinese translated versions of F. D. Roosevelt's First Inaugural Address as an example to illustrate how to evaluate and compare the various translated versions from the perspective of stylistic analysis. And the author selects three translated versions of First Inaugural Address and then makes some stylistic analysis of these three translated versions at the lexical, syntactic and rhetoric levels respectively on the basis of foregrounding.Finally, the author draws the conclusion that stylistic analysis provides a very useful, effective and practical perspective in which the translated versions of public speeches may be evaluated. This stylistic method makes the studies on the translation criticism more objective and more accurate.