On Chinese Translation Of Famous American Political Speeches

This paper tries to make an analysis of the translations of five famous American political speeches from both linguistic and cultural perspectives, working out applicable translation skills or strategies for English political speeches and even non-literary works. The selected five political speeches are separately The Gettysburg Address, Roosevelt's first inaugural and Kennedy's, I Have a Dream, and Nixon's Toast given on his first visit to China. These speeches, which are arranged diachronically, draw an outline of development history of the United States. By reading their Chinese translations Chinese audiences could acquaint themselves with political trend and characteristics of the United States, and what's more, American people's outlook on the life and the value, namely, the essence of the American spirit.There are many problems in the translations of these five political speeches, which are attributable to various elements, such as translators' overlooking differences between English and Chinese, employment of infeasible translation skills and so on. In order to settle the problems and make systematic exploration of the translation of English political speeches, the paper firstly resorts to linguistic influence upon translation activity. No matter what kind of text-type the writing is, its translation should be discussed from linguistic perspective, with which many traditional translation theories or principles are closely linked. With this regard features of English and Chinese and stylistics will be taken into consideration to find out applicable translation methods.Nevertheless, examination of the translation of political speeches from linguistic perspective only turns out to be inadequate and incomprehensive. Against the background of economic globalization translation skills out of consideration of cultural communication are attached more and more importance. With the Pacific Ocean between them, the relations between China and America has attracted people's attention throughout the world. Therefore, it is practical and feasible to analyze the translation of American political speeches under the circumstance of cultural exchange. Political speeches, serving the purpose of information communication, can be studied under the guidance of Functionalism, especially Peter Newmark's theories in terms of the translation.This thesis is made up of four chapters besides introduction and conclusion.In introduction, the author introduces the purpose and the basic structure of the thesis as well as the research done in the past.Chapter One gives brief introduction to English political speeches in terms of their definition, origin, development, main ideas and functions, aiming to lay a foundation for analysis on the translations of political speeches in the following chapters.Chapter Two is about extrinsic and intrinsic studies of the selected five famous American political speeches, such as their background information and stylistic features, and translations.Chapter Three is systematic analysis of the translation of English political speeches from both linguistic and cultural perspectives.Chapter Four is on significance of the translation of five American political speeches from both linguistic and cultural perspectives.Conclusion is the summary of the whole thesis.