On Political Science Text Translation From The Perspective Of Reiss’s And Nord’s Functionalist Models

Over the past decades, China has deepened its reform and opening up, notably increased its overall national strength and steadily expanded its foreign economic and political cooperation. The EU is also emerging as a global player on the world stage through institutional consolidation, trade development and the foreign policy openings of the CFSP. The EU-China relationship is now becoming a significant feature of the international system. In recent years, articles and theses on the EU and China political and economic research have grown to such a large mass.This is a report on the translation of “China and the EU: A Strategic Axis for the Twenty-First Century?” The source text is an article on international relations between China and the EU. David Scott from Brunel University has studied the prospect of the EU-China “strategic partnership” and the differences and similarities between “multi-polarity” and “multilateralism”. He argued that this “partnership” will bring a challenge to American unipolar unilateralism.The translation task attempts to apply the functionalist model of Reiss and Nord both for their relevance in translation studies as well-known practice-oriented models of translation theory and for their use of text typology and text analysis in their frameworks. In Reiss’ s model, she argues that the translation of different text types should adopt corresponding strategies. Based on Reiss’ s theory, Nord has proposed her translation-oriented text analysis model. Reiss’ s classification of text types is unduly simple and general. When it is combined with Nord’s text analysis model, text types and functions can be more accurately fixed and corresponding translation strategies can thus be adapted in a single text.This report falls into six parts, including task description, process description, theoretic preparation, text analysis, case study and conclusion. The help of dictionaries and other references enables the translator to understand the source text and proofread the translation smoothly. The report will demonstrate the text analysis and case study process under the guidance of functionalist models in chapter 4 and 5. The report indicates that political science texts are dominated by informative text, but operative text also play a large role. The translator should try his best to achieve information accuracy, information integrity, and pay attention to the writer’s intention and purpose. The translation aims to improve the translator’s skills under the guidance of functionalist models and present a useful perspective of the EU-China relationship.