A Pragmatic And Rhetorical Approach To Translation Of Political Terms With Chinese Characteristics

With the process of globalization, the exchanges between China and other countries have become increasingly frequent and intercultural communication among people of different cultures is growing. Language is the bridge connecting China and other countries while translation plays an important role in the process of communication. The study on translation of items with Chinese characteristics will be conductive to the dissemination of our culture to the world, the exchange between China and other countries, the improvement of our international position and the harmonious coexistence of different cultures. However, some problems still remain in translation and thus cultural exchanges have been adversely influenced to a certain extent. At present China's cultural dissemination and its impact upon the world do not match the extensiveness and intensiveness of Chinese culture. Therefore it is an urgent need to do researches on translation of items with Chinese Characteristics and seek for an answer to what kind of effectiveness and purpose we should achieve and how to disseminate our culture to the world through translation.With political terms as the focus, this study takes a pragmatic and rhetorical approach to translation of these terms by qualitative and descriptive methods. The process of translation will be described and analyzed through Verschueren's and Kenneth Burke's theories. Through this research it is found that translation should be studied under the cultural and social backgrounds from a macro perspective; translation is a process of choice-making and adapts to different contextual factors such as situation, purpose and target audience. Through the analysis by dramatism, it can be seen that the motive of translators is another factor determining the effectiveness of translation; the final effectiveness according to "identification" proposed by Burke is to make others accept our culture and achieve successful intercultural communication among different people and harmonious coexistence of different cultures. In this way our culture can be disseminated to other countries. Based on the findings of this study, the researcher proposes that Chinese characteristics and the richness of our culture should be displayed in the process of translation in order to attract worldwide attention and consequently encourage foreign countries to know more about our country and accept our culture.