China's Local Government Official Document Translation Case Studies

Official document is a text of special style. Because of its distinctive political, cultural and regional characteristics, we need to pay special attention to the translation. In recent years the Chinese government has devoted more efforts to external political publicity, thus more and more scholars are concerned about the translation of official document. However, there are not much systematical and theoretical research related to the field. In this paper, the translation of report on the work of the government, a typical official document, is token as example and researched. Based on the translation practice and related theory, several skills of political translation are summarized, which helps to improve the quality of political translation.The original document of the translation is excerpted from the report on the work of the government which Li Hongzhong, the governor of Hubei Province, made on the Third Session of the Eleventh People’s Congress of Hubei Province on January 26, 2010, and the contents are plans and policies to be implemented by the provincial government in 2010.The critical commentary consists of three parts. The introduction is the background and overview of political translation. The commentary proposed translation skills in different sectors, such as words, sentences and paragraphs, which are all supported by examples extracted from the translation practice. The conclusion is the summary of the achievements and shortage of the research.