On Translation Of Political Speeches In The Mainland,Hong Kong,Macao And Taiwan From The Perspective Of The Adaptation Theory

Political speeches, especially those delivered by presidents, have played a significant role in American political life. They are of great research value not only in international relations but also in the linguistic domain. Since the first black American president Barack Obama came into office in 2009, many scholars have done researches on his speeches both at home and abroad. But those researches only focus on one or a few aspects of Obama’s speeches, such as interpersonal meanings,stylistics, figures of speech, ideology and so on. Few have done a comprehensive study on all the linguistic, social and cognitive factors of the speeches. The Adaptation Theory put forward by Verschueren takes into full consideration of these factors in the process of language use.This thesis takes different translations of Obama’s political speeches respectively from Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan as the target of study and explores how the translators make adaptations from the perspectives of contextual correlates and language structures under the guidance of culture. Although translations from the four regions of China have differences, all of them can be accepted and approved by their target readers respectively, the reasons can be explained by the Adaptation Theory. This thesis aims to provide a relatively fresh perspective for researches on political speech translation, and make a helpful exploration of the application of the Adaptation Theory as well as a useful attempt to discuss the features of English-to-Chinese translation in the four regions.