The Translation Of Chinese Government's White Papers-from The Perspective Of Presupposition

Government white papers are generally government reports bound in white. They offer a multifold picture of a country and thus play an essential role in making the country known to the world. With the implementation of the reform and opening-up policy, Chinese government's white papers become increasingly important in the exchanges between China and the outside world. However, a good number of translation problems exist in the English versions of Chinese government's white papers, leading to misunderstandings or even a negative impact on China's image. So far many studies have been carried out to reveal these problems as well as their causes and have offered some valuable suggestions. The present study, however, attempts to adopt a new perspective --- presupposition--- to explore certain kinds of problems in the translation of Chinese government's white papers. Generally speaking, there are two approaches to presupposition in linguistics: semantic and pragmatic presupposition. The former examines the logical relation between two sentences while the latter is related to contextual factors and the belief or knowledge of the addresser or addressee. This thesis adopts the pragmatic approach and uses the semantic one whenever necessary. After discussing the application and the role of presupposition theory as well as the specific requirements on the translator, the author finds that presupposition theory plays an essential role in the translation of Chinese government's white papers. It is hoped that the current research could offer some valuable suggestions to the translation of Chinese government's white papers and shed light on the application of presupposition theory in translation studies.