On E-C Translation Of English Political Speech In The Light Of Eco-translatology

English Political speech, as an important category of public speeches, plays anirreplaceable role in western political life. The speakers are usually government officialstalking about or commenting on all kinds of big and hot issues at home and abroad, so as toshow their political stance, to advocate their political proposals, to motivate and win theaudiences’ support and to maintain the relationship and stability. Among the English politicalspeeches, the series of speeches delivered in president campaign, the president inauguralspeeches, and diplomatic speeches attract the most attentions. The45th American presidentBarack Obama is regarded as a legend in the history of American political presidential. Hissuccess is said to be largely attributed to his excellent political speeches with out-standingpersonal speech ability. Nowadays, along with the trend of globalization and informanization,English political speech plays an important role in the communications between countries,and attracts more and more Chinese readers with the value of appreciation and study.Therefore, the importance of the translation study on English political speeches isincreasingly prominent.Eco-translatology is a newly emerged translation theory proposed under the backgroundof globalization and interdisciplinary researches. Based on the development of An Approachto Translation as Adaptation and Selection, Eco-translatology studies translation from anecological perspective, and defines translation as an activity of the translator’s adaptation andselection on textual transplants to fit in with the translational eco-environment. In the light ofthe translation principle of “multi-dimensional adaptation and adaptive selection”,comprehensively considering various factors in the complex translational eco-environment,the translator relatively focuses on the transformations and adaptive selections on linguisticdimension, cultural dimension and communicative dimension. In the past10years of itsdevelopment, the theory of Eco-translatology has been widely applied to researches onvarious translation aspects. However, there are still few research projects and works or paperson the translation of political speeches from the perspective of Eco-translatology. Therefore,there is still much room for the exploration of political speech translation in the light ofEco-translatology. According to Eco-translatology, English political speech translation can be regarded asan activity of the translator’s adaptation and selection on textual transplant to fit thetranslational eco-environmentt. With some core concepts of “translational eco-environment”,“adaptation and selection”,“three-dimensional transformation” and “eco-balance” ofEco-translatology as point-cut, and the Chinese versions of some classic political speeches byObama as the main study object, the thesis mainly analyzes translator’s actions in thetranslation process from three aspects: the adaptation to readers’ needs and the selection oftranslation strategy; the adaptation to translator’s own linguistic competence and the selectionof language expression; the adaptation to communicative intention and the selection of thecultural translation method. During the analyses, the thesis also discusses the factors that thedistinctive translational eco-environment involves so as to give enlightenment for a politicalspeech translator to have better adaptation and selection, and multi-dimensionaltransformation in producing a translation work with a high degree of holistic adaptation andselection which can be widely accepted by the target readers.Four chapters constitute the main body of this thesis. Chapter One mainly makesintroductions of some important concepts in Eco-translatology, and the definition, the functionand stylistic features of English political speeches respectively, furthermore, and brieflydescribes and explains the enlightenment of Eco-translatology to the translation studies on theChinese versions of Obama’s political speeches. Chapter Two analyzes the translator’sadaptation to the target readers’ needs and his/her adaptive selection of strategies. ChapterThree discusses the translator’s adaptation to vocabulary, syntax and rhetorical style ofpolitical speeches and his/her selection with their relevant linguistic competence. ChapterFour mainly analyzes a translator’s adaptation to the communicative intentions and his/heradaptive selection of cultural translation methods.Based on the study of E-C translation of Obama’s several classic political speeches, thethesis makes a tentative study on translator’s adaptation and selection in English politicalspeech translation from the perspective of Eco-translatology. It reaches a conclusion thatpolitical speech translation is a complex process which is characterized by the translator’sconstant adaptation and selection, since in this process the adaptation is selective, and at thesame time, the selection is adaptive. It can prove that Eco-translatology has strong explanatory and directive power to the E-C translation of English political speeches.