A Study On The C-E Translation Of RWG From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

Since the policy of reform and opening-up was implemented in1978, China hasmade impressive achievements and has already become a powerful member in theglobal society. Meanwhile, exchanges and cooperation among China and othercountries are getting constantly deepened. Foreigners have an increasingly strongdesire to know this largest socialist country in the world more fully.As a typical type of political text and publicity material, the annual RWG reviewsand summarizes the work the government has done in the past year or the past fiveyears and then describes the general plan for the next year or five years. The wholereport touches on various areas of the country. It is an authoritative source ofinformation and serves as a direct and convenient channel for people abroad to get acomprehensive understanding of China’s current situation. Hence, the translation ofRWG is of pivotal importance in the country’s image-building in the global society.However, it is not an easy job to translate RWG well. Since this document is highlypolitically sensitive, its translation is rather demanding. Even a minor error may harmChina’s interest or image. What’s more, the unique features, both at linguistic leveland cultural level, pose quite a few challenges for translators. Thus it is of muchnecessity to carry out a thorough study on RWG translation and seek feasible andeffective strategies for producing arcuate and appropriate translated texts.The current study on RWG translation is by no means adequate or desirable. Mostscholars only focus their discussions on certain specific problems in translation basedon their personal practice and experience of translating political texts. Therefore,systematic and scientific research with solid and reasonable theoretical instruction isstill much needed.Skopos theory, which emerged in the1970s in Germany, injects new flood into thestudies on translation. It rises against the traditional equivalence theory whichadvocates “faithfulness” or “equivalence” and stresses that translation is a kind ofpurposeful communicative act across cultures and what strategies to choose mainlydepends on what skopos (purpose) a translation aims to realize. Skopos theory highlights the function of target text, the purpose of translation and the importance oftranslators. It gives more freedom to translators in flexibly choosing strategies fortranslation. This theory is hence of much guiding significance for translation practice.RWG belongs to the category of practical writing which has a clear purpose. Thisthesis discusses the applicability of Skopos theory to RWG translation and analyzesthe major influencing factors and principles in it. The author takes the2014RWG asthe main object and analyzes its translation both quantitatively and qualitatively. Fromthe angle of Skopos Theory and based on the quantitative statistics, the authorconcludes some main strategies for translating RWG at lexical level, syntactical leveland textual level respectively. The study aims to explore reasonable theoreticalinstruction and feasible strategies for RWG translation. The author hopes that thispaper can provide a little help in improving the quality of RWG translation and offersome implication for later relevant studies.