A Study On The English Version Of2013Government Work Report Under The Framework Of Adaptation Theory

With the pace of reform and opening up, the exchanges and communicationbetween China and the international world have become more frequent and muchbroader than ever before. The steadily increasing comprehensive national strength andinternational prestige have strengthened China’s influence around the world. WhileChina is quickening her pace to go onto the world stage, the world is eager to learnabout China. As the most representative and authoritative political document in China,the annual Government Work Report shows the latest national conditions anddevelopment trend of China to the outside world. The Report concentrates on China’seconomy, social undertakings, politics, cultural life and many other fields, whichattracts the world’s attention. The expression adopted in GWR is concise and precise,with strong cultural characteristics and appeal. However, this formal expression putsmore strict requirements on the corresponding English translation versions. A preciseand accurate translation can appropriately show China’s international image to theworld; meanwhile, it can largely influence the evaluation and approval of China bythe international community. Its significance is self-evidence.This paper selects the original and English versions of2013GWR as theresearch objects. Under Jef Verschueren’s Adaptation Theory, this paper makes aqualitative and quantitative analysis. The Adaptation Theory provides a newpragmatic perspective to observe and understand various levels in languageresearches. Verschueren points out that language use is the process of continuousmaking choices. People can continuously make choices during this process becauselanguage has three properties, that is, variability, negotiability and adaptability.Language use is involved in the course of translation, which means that choices havebeen made. Therefore, Adaptation Theory can be applied as guidance on translatingGWR. At the same time, Verschueren explains and describes language use, twoaspects of which, extra-linguistic contextual adaptation in translation andintra-linguistic structural adaptation in translation, are the focus of this paper. Afterexplaining some adaptation phenomenon in the process of GWR translation, some translation strategies are put forward accordingly.The significance of this research is as follows: applying Verschueren’sAdaptation Theory to the translation of political documents offers a valuableacademic practice and new thoughts to translation studies. Besides, through caseanalysis of the English version of2013GWR, the linguistic corpus of AdaptationTheory in comparative study of English and Chinese becomes more abundant whichimproves translators’ better understanding of GWR translation. However, there aresome limitations in this paper which still needs further investigation.