Problems And Improvements Of English Translation Of Local Government Portals Of Hunan Province

Nowadays, with the construction of government portals of many countries, e-government has been an important part of administrative management reformation, and it does become a effective means to boost efficiency of administrative management and increase the relationships between government and enterprises as well as citizens. With China’s reform and opening up policy and the successful host of2008Olympic Games, many local governments launch their own English portals in order to follow the current of the world as well as expanding publicity. At present, not only the central People’s government, the People’s government of Provinces and cities, even the People’s government of town or village has its own English portal. The main audiences of them are foreign investors, travelers, foreign students and other people who are interested in Chinese culture and resources. And the main purpose of constructing English portals is to provide information in every aspect of local government such as politics, economics, tourism, culture and so on, and thus to enhance the communication with foreign countries in every field.Through the Internet searching, the author finds that there are six government portals with correspondent English Translation portals. However, the translation quality of language used in English portals is not as good as it is expected, and the phenomenon of misunderstanding and mistranslation is very common, or just translate the texts word for word, not in the least take into consideration of influence exerted by ideology. The texts of English portals are publicity to the foreign countries, and the quality is related to the exchange activities even the economic benefits. The proper translation will helps a lot in projecting a positive image of local government while an awful translation will only arouse confusion, misunderstanding or repulsion. For this end, some scholars in China have done some researches about this. But, the studies are scattered and not systematic, few of them apply the translation theory to analyzing, and they less apply Lefevere’s ideology manipulation.Lefevere holds that ideology is a network of concept, which consists of the views and opinions accepted during a certain period, and thus it affects the way that translators and readers analyze the texts. Therefore, ideology has some effect of orientation, and even influence the way people view the world.Aiming to find the general problems arising in English translation of government portals, this thesis carries out a study over English translation of local government portals of Hunan Province in light of Lefevere’s ideology manipulation Theory. Firstly, the thesis discusses the influence of ideology on translation. Moreover, the thesis describes the characteristics of language used in government portal, discussing the problems as well as making an analysis on English translation of local government portals of Hunan Province on the basis of the above theoretical framework. In the end, the thesis proposes the improvements on English translation of government portals from macro to micro strategies. The macro strategies include improving translation skills of translators, standardizing specialized terms, examining strictly and correcting timely and enhancing cooperation with experts from home and abroad. The micro strategies contain considering readers’needs, adopting variation translation strategies and taking foreignization strategies instead of domestication properly, aiming to improve the quality of English translation of government portals and enrich the future researches on pragmatic translation in this field.