On The Translation Of Government Work Reports: From The Perspective Of Translation Ethics

In recent years, China has scored marvelous achievements in its socialist modernization drive, leading to its ever-elevating international status and influence.On the one hand, China expects to be better understood and accepted by the outside world, thus playing a more significant part in the international arena; on the other hand, the global community is eager to understand more about China’s economic and social development. Such desires contribute a lot to booming the English translation of publicity materials, among which the translation of Government Work Reports(GWRs) is particularly important owing to the fact that it is the most authoritative medium informing the world of China’s latest situation as it contains widespread information on China’s political, economic, cultural, foreign and other development.A large number of domestic scholars have been attracted to explore the English translation of GWRs, making great contribution to this field. Most researches focus on discussing the switching techniques in linguistic level, or describing the extratextual factors affecting translation process, failing in attaching sufficient importance to the ethics in translation. Owing to the political, ideological and other contradictions between source and target cultures, translators have to make appropriate choices through weighing multiply values to deal with conflicts, which depends on translation ethics in essence. That is, the translation of GWRs cannot get rid of the influence of translation ethics. Therefore, a study from the perspective of ethics would be beneficial to understanding how the English versions of GWRs are produced objectively and profoundly.Since 1980 s when Berman puts forward the concept of “translation ethics”,numerous scholars have devoted themselves to it, among which, Andrew Chesterman is a prominent representative. He proposes five models of translation ethics, namely the ethics of representation, the ethics of service, the ethics of communication, normbased ethics and the ethics of commitment, which is a systematic division and exerts profound influence on further study of translation ethics. It would be helpful in understanding translator’s decision and the production of translated text to have an analysis based on it.This thesis explores how ethical factors have an influence on translators’ choice of translation strategies as well as the production of translated version by taking Chesterman’s five models of translation ethics as the theoretical framework, Chinese and English versions of GWRs(2000-2015) as the subject. Since translating GWRs is a special activity, for the author of the original text and the client who initiates the translation is the same one—the Chinese government, there is no conflicts between them. As long as the original text and the author’s intention is faithfully represented in a way that can be understood and accepted by target readers, the ethics of service would be followed. In other words, as long as the ethics of representation, the ethics of communication and norm-based ethics are complied with, the ethics of service is also achieved. Besides, the ethics of commitment is a general model which requires translators to strive for excellence in translation, it’s not realistic to analyze its concrete influence on translators’ choices of translation strategies. Therefore, this thesis would have a research on the translation of GRW from the ethics of representation and communication as well as norm-based ethics.It consists of six chapters: chapter one focuses on introducing research background, questions, purpose, significance, methodology and presenting the thesis structure. Chapter two reviews previous studies on the translation of GWRs by categorizing them into studies based on practical translation, linguistic studies,cultural studies and ethical studies. Besides, the necessity of studying the translation of GWRs from the perspective of translation ethics is revealed through pointing out the limitations of these studies. Chapter three, four and five constitute the principal part of the thesis, discussing how the ethics of representation, the ethics of communication and norm-based ethics play a role in the translation of GWRs respectively: chapter three analyses how the translated versions represent the linguistic style of formality, conciseness, and preciseness as well as the author’sintention; chapter four discusses how translators facilitate target readers’ understanding of culture-loaded words, three/four-character-structures, abbreviated numeral expressions, metaphorical expressions etc. in translation to achieve communication; and chapter five studies how the translated texts abide by English norms and foreign readers’ expectations at lexical, syntactic and discourse levels.Chapter six is the conclusion, in which the major findings are summarized,limitations are revealed and suggestions for further studies are put forward.The study shows that Chesterman’s models of translation ethics are significant in guiding the translation of GWRs, and the translated versions are essentially products resulting from the conjunct effects of these models on translators’ choices.Specifically speaking, as a political discourse, the translation of GWRs should give priority to the ethics of representation through representing the truth, author’s intention and style faithfully; besides, target readers’ cultural background and expectations need to be taken into consideration to create understandable and acceptable English versions, which are the substances of the ethics of communication and norm-based ethics. What’s more, Chesterman’s models of translation ethics can be taken as a multi-dimensional theoretical framework for assessing the translation quality of GWRs. The present study would not only enlighten readers of GWRs to have a better understanding but also provide a fresh angle for further studies on the English translation of political texts.