On The C-E Translation Of Diplomatic Speeches From The Perspective Of Peter Newmark’s Text Type Classification And Translation Methods

Diplomatic speeches, delivered by state leaders and senior diplomats on diplomatic occasions, are one of important diplomatic means to introduce current situations of countries, express viewpoints on international issues and put forward suggestions and hopes for the future relations. In recent years, with the deepening of globalization and the enhancement of its comprehensive strength, China is more open to the outside world and is making itself further understood through all sorts of means. Against this backdrop, diplomatic speeches play an increasingly important role and received more attention from statesmen, scholars and the public. When the important diplomatic speeches finish, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of People’s Republic would publish the source texts and their translated versions on the website.Through comparing and analyzing some sentences and paragraphs selected from the website of Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the author of this dissertation attempts to conclude the stylistic features of Chinese diplomatic speeches and to investigate the usefulness and effectiveness of Peter Newmark’s text type classification and translation methods in the translation of Chinese diplomatic speeches. According to the Newmark’s text type classification, the author selects samples and classifies them into three categories:expressive, informative and vocative. After conducting careful comparison and analysis on those selected source texts and their translated versions at the lexical and syntactic level, the author finds that when it comes to expressive texts of diplomatic speeches, the translator uses semantic translation to fully present the speaker’s thought process and keep the preciseness of the information. When dealing with informative and vocative texts, the translator applies communicative translation to make the content accessible and faithful to be transferred and make the readers easier to think, feel and act. Therefore, the author concludes that it is necessary and feasible to bring Newmark’s text type classification and translation methods into the C-E translation of diplomatic speeches. If the translator could first carry out text type classification of different paragraphs of diplomatic speeches and then adopt the appropriate translation methods, i.e. semantic or communicative, the thought process and stylistic features would be reproduced to a greatest degree.This thesis hopes to provide a feasible and effective solution to the translation of Chinese diplomatic speeches and to offer some enlightenment for future exploration.