Translating Government Web Portals: A Model Supported By The Skopostheorie

E-government is currently one of the leading approaches to governmentinformationization among countries around the world. Since2006, Chinese localgovernments at all levels have began to build their English web portals which play asignificant role in attracting foreign investment, facilitating internationalcommunication as well as helping China establish a good online presence. This studyevaluates these translated English web portals based on findings from100surveyquestionnaires and9interviews. Results reveal poor satisfaction of target audience.Translation failures in module design, content selection, style adjustment andadaptation of culture-specific words are prevalent in the existing English versions,undermining the web portal quality. Based on the statistics, the study probes into thefunctions of the English version and proposes a trans-editing model for C-Egovernment web portal translation through parallel corpora analysis. In this model, thecurrent translation mode is suggested to be modified and specific translation principle,techniques and norms are raised to guide the module design, content selection, styleadjustment as well as adaptation of culture-specific words in translating a Chinesegovernment web portal.