On The Translation Of Chinese Government Documents From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence Theory

Because of their sensitiveness, seriousness and great influence, the translation of government documents demand overall translating ability. In such circumstances, to compose a high quality translation version is not easy. The translators of government documents should not only be familiar with grammar and semantics, but also with the culture factors and expressing means in different languages etc. Because of the sensitiveness of government documents and the limitations of relevant translating theories, this thesis will, based on the Functional equivalence theory, discussed how to more appropriately translate government documents with qualitative and case studies.The first part introduced Nida’s Functional equivalence theory and relevant theories, and their researches and applications based on the translation of government documents.The second part discussed relevant translating theories, compared their contents and rationality and analyzed the characteristics of the translated version of government documents.The third part analyzed the guiding role of functional equivalence theory in the translation of government documents with the examples given and discussed the problems in translating words and sentences.The fourth part analyzed the translating skills and methods, such as switch of part of speech, sentence structures, the integration of sentence and so on. It also discussed the translation of idioms and long or short sentences with complex structures, and the difficulties in the process of translating. The factors leading to those difficulties include cultural differences, habits, language and social background were also discussed in the thesis. Translating methods were then provided to illustrate how to more appropriately translate government documents.The last part concluded that the translator of government documents should pay attention to the readability and the acceptability of the translated version. And it pointed out the influence of recipients in translating process, such as their expressing means, thought habit and passionate factors to further illustrate how to more appropriately translate the government documents.