Analyses Of Antithesis Used In American Presidential Inaugural Addresses And Its E-C Translation

The inaugural address of the US president (IAUSP) is the most eye-catching political public speaking, the importance of which is self-evident. All the inaugural addresses are elaborated and polished time and again, trying to create something new and original in diction and sentence pattern. Thus almost all the addresses embody a highly proficient technique of exploiting the English language. Most American inaugural addresses are truly masterpieces full of aesthetic sentiment. And in this style of writing can be found a rich mine of rhetorical devices.Rhetorical devices in such addresses, while providing us with their linguistic charm, pose a tough job for translation. This thesis is to analyze, by way of enumerating all the antithesis sentences, the structural characteristics of this figure of speech, its diachronic distributions and connective manners in the American presidential inaugural addresses, and then make a careful study of how to achieve relatively ideal methods for its English-Chinese translation practice. The research methods adopted include enumeration, contrast and induction. A brief review of disputes over translation criteria leads to our conclusion that the translation of antithesis in the inaugural addresses from English into Chinese should give priority of faithfulness in meaning to the original texts over faithfulness to the original forms. In the process of such translation research and practice, we need to explore methods in view of translation aesthetics while observing the proposal of "speaking as the Chinese speak".A tentative finding, among others, of the present study reveals the tendency of using antithesis in the inaugural addresses from naught through some instances to a great many, culminating in the 20th century. Long sentences in IAUSPs have become fewer and fewer and short ones, more and more, which lends very well to the antithesis intended for contrasts in meaning and parallel structure in form. The increasing use of antithesis in IAUSPs also indicates some diachronic changes in the English language. As to the translation of antithesis, this thesis first argues that "对照" can be the most suitable Chinese translation and then suggests that literal translation should be given priority in translating this figure of speech over other methods such as employing alliteration, rhyme, four-character structure and classical Chinese.