The C-E Translation Of Chinese Political Texts From The Perspective Of Functional Typology

With the rapid development of China’s economy and a remarkable rise in China’scomprehensive national strength, China has a bigger say on the international stage now.China needs to get its voice heard worldwide, and the communication of its politicalthoughts and policies is gaining increasing importance. Therefore, the translation ofpolitical texts plays a crucial role. Many a scholar and translator has evaluated thetranslation of Government Work Report (GWR) of the Central Government from variousperspectives and proposed better versions. In this thesis, the translation of GWR of localgovernment is discussed. Because of distinctive contents peculiar to local areas, this caseanalysis has practical and explorative significance.The author takes2011Suzhou Municipal Government Work Report as the content tobe translated. Guided by Nord’s Functional Typology, the author attempts to elucidatesome principles and appropriate strategies. According to Nord, text functions can beclassified into four major types: referential, expressive, appellative and phatic functions,and each function can be sub-divided. After a brief analysis of political texts, the authorproposes that in this practice, informative function (a sub-function under referentialfunction) should first of all be guaranteed with due consideration of expressive andappellative functions. Based on this, the author then proposes three principles in thetranslating process.The first principle is fidelity in political contents. In order to achieve accuracy in thecommunication of political contents, the translator must acquire necessary politicalknowledge and keep herself informed of various events in this field.The second principle is reader-orientation. Because of differences between Chineseand English, the translator needs to make adjustments at lexical, syntactic and discourselevels so as to make the translated version understandable to English readers.The third one is the precedence of meaning conveyance over form retaining. Forthose abbreviations with rich political contents, the translator might need to abandon the original form and add necessary information to facilitate understanding.It is the author’s hope that, with those specific examples listed in this thesis, someguidelines can be elucidated for translating GWR of local governments and the educationof talents in this field can get more attention.