On The C/E Translation Of Government Work Report Under The Guidance Of Functional Typology

With the implementation of reform and opening-up policy since 1978, China has been conducting more and more communication with the world in terms of economy, culture as well as politics. As a mouthpiece of the Chinese government, the government work report not only reviews the achievements in the previous year, but also puts forward future plans. It has become an important channel for the outside world to learn more about China. To achieve this function of the government work report, translation plays a major role. This thesis is to study the strategies and principles for the English translation of the Chinese government work report under the guide of functional typology.Basically, this thesis is a descriptive study starting from a literature review of traditional, linguistic and functional translation theories in terms of text types. In traditional and linguistic translation theories, the source text or equivalence principle was taken as the criteria for translation. However, functional theories provide a wider field of vision for translation studies and tapped more potential translation methods for translation practices. Among the various models of functional theories, Nord's translation-oriented model of basic text functions and two basic types of translation strategy is taken as the theoretical framework. In such a model, text functions include the referential function, the expressive function, the appellative function and the phatic function. At the same time, each text function contains several sub-functions. Nord also brings forward two translation strategies—documentary translation and instrumental translation. Since translation is an active process of communication, the function of the source text by its own cannot decide the translation strategy. Which strategy is to be adopted is decided by the purpose of translation. Thus, if the purpose of translation is to maintain the function of the source text, function markers often have to be adopted to target culture standards, where instrumental translation should be used to realize it; if the source culture function markers are exactly reproduced in the target text, it might induce the target receivers to assign a different function to the target text, where documentary translation should be applied to achieve such an aim.Through a functional analysis of the translation of government work report, it is found that the expressive function of its source text is converted into an informative (a sub-function of referential function) one in its English version because the main function of the target text is to convey information to the English-speaking readers. Therefore we can decide on documentary translation as the basic translation strategy. The English version of Chinese government work report is considered as a documentary of source-culture communicative interaction for target readers. That is to say, the English-speaking readers play the role of observers on how the source text communicates with the Chinese readers.Combining with the stylistic characteristics of Chinese government work report, five translation principles can be inferred as follows: accuracy, completeness, formality, conciseness and naturalness. After detailed analysis of substantial examples, it can be proved that documentary translation and these principles indeed can effectively guide the translation process.