A Syntactic Study Of The English Version Of The 2006 Report On Government Work

This thesis offers a detailed analysis, at the syntactic level, of the translation of the government work report delivered by Premier Wen Jiabao at the Fourth Session of the Tenth National People's Congress on March 5, 2006.Government work reports belong to a peculiar type of text, having a special style with both universal and unique linguistic characteristics. They are delivered orally by premiers at the People's Congress, yet are written with extreme elaboration. They consist of looking back at the past achievements and shortcomings as well as planning the work for the following year. For most part, they clarify and expound the policies and viewpoints of the government. Therefore, their translation should have clear and precise diction, and ambiguity is forbidden.This thesis integrates achievements in translation studies both domestic and abroad, with a view to applying translation theories to practice and putting forward useful translation techniques. The thesis is composed of two parts, in eleven chapters.The first part is a general review of the achievements made in translation. The first chapter is a survey of the Chinese traditional translation theories represented by Yanfu's "faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance", Luxun's "宁信而勿顺" Lin Yutang's "aesthetic equivalence", Fu Lei's "spiritual likeness rather than formal similarity" and Qian Zhongshu's criterion of "perfection". The second chapter is an introduction to western theories, focusing on the recent development of translation studies. In this chapter, the author chooses the three most influential representatives whose theories have had and are still having great impact on the translation field: Eugene A. Nida and Functional Equivalence, Peter Newmark's Semantic vs. Communicative Translation and Lawrence Venuti's The Translator's Invisibility. The latter two are employed as the guiding theories for the analysis of the 2006 government work report for their applicability in translation practice. The author finds that since the traditional translation theories lack systemic study, we may rely more on the findings of the linguistic theories and "cultural turn" theory. In the translation field, people believe that the two are independent of each other. However, a combination of the two may better explain the various kaleidoscopic phenomena in translation practice. In fact, a text can be rendered with such great flexibility that it may deviate far from the original and seems quite "unfaithful". Venuti gave such translation a detailed study in his theory of the translator's visibility. A combination of the linguistic and cultural approach can more adequately describe the translation activities. Furthermore, the present author believes that the western theories emphasize the study of macro-theories while the traditional Chinese theories tend to focus on micro-techniques of translation. In my paper I prefer to integrate a macro-theory with micro-techniques so as to enhance the applicability of the theories in the Chinese context.The second part of this thesis is the principal part where translation theories and practice are combined in an analysis of translation at the syntactic level. This part consists of nine chapters, classifying the micro-techniques in detail. From chapter 3 to chapter 10 the author analyzes how to translate different elements of the Chinese sentence into English in accordance with Newmark's Semantic vs. Communicative translation. Take the treatment of attributives for example. Because Chinese allows prefix attributives regardless of their length and number, we have to transform them into other structures, such as clauses or sentences, coordinate structures, appositives or rearrange the structure of the whole sentence. In the analysis, the author first explores the structural differences between the two languages and then puts forward the solution to bridge this difference in translation. The author also touches upon other solutions such as treatment of adverbial phrases, no-subject or no-object Chinese sentences, subordination of words and collocations, joining and dividing sentences, coordinate construction, and sharing the same part. The last chapter of this part questions "absolute fidelity." Although the new theories emerging during the cultural turn lend to be more applicable to literar(?) works, the author finds that they can also be applied to the translation of a serious political document. The author lists some reasons for unfaithfulness to the original such as the indeterminacy or blank points in the source text. Then solutions are proposed in accordance with Venuti's theory of the Translator's Visibility.