A Comparative Analysis Of English Political Speeches Translation From The Perspective Of Interpersonal Function

A political speech is one type of public speeches, and its purpose is to state clear the position, clarify one’s opinion or to persuade and encourage the audiences. With more and more frequent communication of politics, economy and culture between the east and west, many political speeches have been translated into Chinese. The development of language study has provided bigger room for the research of political speeches translation and Halliday’s interpersonal function theory is a good approach. This theory mainly focuses on the relationship between the speaker and the listeners, and how to establish and maintain the relationship by verbal interaction.On this point, the characteristics and purposes of political speeches are just what interpersonal function theory focuses on. Therefore, the analysis of the mood and modality system of political speeches will provide us a criterion for the appreciation of the translation versions. In recent years, although there have been some studies about political speeches, few have made comparative analysis of the translation of political speeches from the perspective of interpersonal function.An inaugural speech is a typical kind of political speeches, and the purpose of inaugural speeches is to clarify the new government’s policy in order to win the support of the public and call on the public to take up their obligations and responsibilities. Therefore, an inaugural speech has rich interpersonal meanings. In this thesis, the author takes the example of the inaugural speech of President Obama in 2008, and both qualitative and quantitative research methods are employed, to make a comparative analysis of its two Chinese versions, one is offered by U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of ⅡP (hereinafter referred to as Version 1), the other by People’s Daily (hereinafter referred to as Version 2). From the perspective of mood and modality system within the framework of interpersonal function theory, the author tries to summarize the strategies and skills of political speeches translation in order to provide a feasible perspective of the appreciation of political speeches translation. By analyzing Obama’s speech and its two Chinese versions in the thesis, it can be found that,(1) In President Obama’s inaugural speech in 2008, he uses more declarative mood than imperative mood, and there is no interrogative mood in the speech; from the perspective of modality, modal operators and adjuncts are the most frequently used, especially modal adjuncts with median and low value. And there are more mood adjuncts than comment adjuncts in the speech.(2) By the comparative analysis of the two translation versions, Version 1 is better than Version 2 in reproducing the interpersonal meanings of the source text and realizing the communicative purposes, for Version 1 has appropriately preserved the mood structures and most modal expressions in the source text, while there are some errors in Version 2 in the translation of both mood structures and some modal operators and adjuncts.(3) From the perspective of translation strategies and skills, for one thing, it is necessary to maintain most of the mood types of the source text while sometimes an appropriate change is needed. For another, appropriate modal expressions which are carefully chosen are helpful to accurately convey the interpersonal meanings of the source text.