Translation Of Texts On International Relations From The Perspective Of General Hermeneutics

State of the Union Address is one of the most important US political texts, and it is also asignificant bridge for researching the US government policies, thus the study of the State ofthe Union Address cannot be neglected. Based on its Chinese translation, this thesis aims toanalyze its significance with Schleiermacher’s general hermeneutics. Hermeneutics is thestudy of understanding and it always comes along with misunderstanding. Misunderstandingis the fundamental of hermeneutics; the task of understanding is to avoid misunderstanding,i.e.“to understand the text better than the author himself”. According to Schleiermacher, thereare two ways to diminish misunderstanding: grammatical explanation and psychologicalanalysis. The former stresses the universality of language, while the latter emphasizes thespecificity of language. To understand texts correctly, grammatical explanation andpsychological analysis should be combined. Hermeneutic circle is the dialectic ofgrammatical explanation and psychological analysis, and it runs through these two aspects. Inaddition, it is the circular relation of the whole and part: the understanding of the wholedepends on the understanding of part; while the understanding of part cannot be separatedfrom the whole. Based on the analysis of the text characteristics of State of the Union Addressand its current translation situation, this thesis cited Schleiermacher’s general hermeneuticstheory to analysis its Chinese translation. The author believes that general hermeneutic theorycould help the translators to understand international relations texts better, such as State of theUnion Address.