The English Translation Of China’s National Defense White Paper From The Perspective Of K. Reiss’s Text Type Theory

Since the 1978 reform and opening-up, China has risen in economy and become an influential power in the world; in the meantime, China has engaged in arms expansion massively, so that relevant countries have worried and even been fearful about China’s power and toughness. In the new era, the rising China needs to appropriately pass on its own advanced civilized idea, development idea and risen idea to the world so as to gradually eliminate the relevant countries’fear. As a result, China must communicate with the world. Information office of the State Council releases national defense white paper every other year, which aims to make the world well understand China and establish China and its army’s good image. Therefore, the translation of national defense white paper is very important. The thesis will take 2013 China’s national defense white paper The Diversified Employment of China’s Armed Forces and its English translation as research objects.Based on the text type theory of German functional school representative K. Reiss (1923-), the thesis tries to employ qualitative-based research method, analyzes China’s national defense white paper’s functional achievement and translation strategies from the perspective of phrases, syntax and rhetoric in order to attract more people to pay attention to and research government documents’ translation and improve translation quality and then let the people around the world further understand China’s national defense policies.The thesis shows that K. Reiss’s text type theory is embodied in English translation of national defense white paper:text type theory is conducive to the analysis of text function of national defense white paper and language characteristics of the text, and then can help translator to adopt the corresponding translation strategies. In addition, the thesis also points out that text type needs to be further defined.