Semantic Gap In Chinese-english Translation Of Political Slogans

As China’s international status continues to rise, it will have much more influences on the future of the world. The outside world ought to pay more attention to China, especially to its policies. To understand Chinese political slogans is an effective way for people from the English-speaking countries to understand China’s politics. Therefore, the translation of Chinese-English political slogans is drawing much more attention all over the world.This thesis is mainly to discuss the semantic gaps in the Chinese-English translation of political slogans. In this thesis, the author explores the background of the Chinese-English translation of political slogans and the significance of it. At the same time, the author reviews studies done by previous scholars and translators. The translation of political slogans involves sensitive information such as politics and ideology, therefore, the Chinese-English translation of political slogans is different from the translation of other forms of literary works. The difficulties in the Chinese-English translation of political slogans always bring forward various kinds of problems and cause semantic gap on Chinese political slogan translating into English. During the process of translation, because of the existence of the distinctive features of both China and the English-speaking countries that are under the influence of history, culture, customs, region and religion, semantic gaps between readers of the source texts and readers of the target texts would appear. In this thesis, the author analyzes the different characteristics of the English and Chinese political slogans, and analyzes on the semantic gap in Chinese-English translation of political slogans. In this thesis, the author proposes corresponding translation strategies such as literal translation, transliteration, liberal translation, addition and deletion. The author also proposes several requirements for translators of Chinese-English political slogan translation, such as high political sensibility, expanded translation skills, enhanced encyclopedic knowledge, cultural awareness, and translator competence.The translation of political slogans from Chinese into English is to ensure that the target readers could understand the source information. Therefore, in order to better present the Chinese culture and policy, it is urgent to resolve the issue of semantic gap in the process of the political slogans translation. I hope this thesis could play a certain role in the study of the translation of Chinese political slogans into English.