Semantic Translation And Communicative Translation In The Translation Of Chinese Political Writings

The po(?)tical writings represent the policies and guidelines of a country. They relate to the country's sovereignty, territorial integrity and fundamental interests. They also concern the relationships between different countries and different regions and even influence the developing trends of the global situation. As an independent style, the political writings can be put into two categories: one is official document, the other type is called political essay. In most cases, political writings are issued by authoritative persons or government organs to show policies or guidelines of a country or to make analysis or judgment in response to certain issues. The political writings distinguish themselves from the writings of other styles as they are mainly concerned with political affairs within or outside a country. Therefore, the quality of the translation work of political writings is of special importance.This thesis attempts to probe into the translation of Chinese political writings from the perspective of semantic translation (ST) and communicative translation (CT), which are two translation approaches presented by British translation theorist Peter Newmark in his book Approaches to Translation.Based upon Buhler's classification of language functions, Peter Newmark forges his text typology and puts texts into three types, i.e. the expressive type, the informative type and the vocative type. To tackle the problems of translating different types of texts, he accordingly puts forward the methods of semantic translation and communicative translation. His twin methods contribute a lot to the general translation theories and are recognized as Peter Newmark's most influential achievement in translation studies. In the light of semantic translation and communicative translation, the author tries to provide principles and possible strategies for the translation of Chinese political writings.This thesis consists of four chapters:Chapter One gives an introduction to Peter Newmark's semantic translation and communicative translation. The author first discusses the background and the theoretical basis of ST and CT, and then expounds the two translation methods by comparing their differences and similarities. Furthermore, Newmark's text typology and its relation with ST and CT are presented here.Chapter Two introduces the characteristics of Chinese political writings. It tells about the classification, stylistic features and the functions of Chinese political writings.Chapter Three is an illustration of the main language and cultural obstructions in the translation of Chinese political writings. As political writings are also carriers of language and culture, they inevitably bear traces of different languages, cultures and ways of thinking. By comparing the Chinese and English languages, the author first proposes the language obstructions. Then the cultural obstructions in the Chinese-English translation of political writings are discussed.Chapter Four is a tentative study on the general translation methods, principles and possible strategies in the translation of Chinese political writings which are based on Peter Newmark's text typology and semantic translation and communicative translation.