Study On English Translation Of Ancient Chinese Poetry And Prose In The Governance Of China

Ancient Chinese poetry and prose reflects the poetic wisdom of the Chinese nation.When they are quoted by our state leaders in public speeches,they help speakers to express themselves in a more informative and appealing way.In The Governance of China,Chinese President Xi Jinping cites more than one hundred ancient Chinese poetry and prose,developing a distinctive form of speaking,demonstrating characteristics of Chinese language and rich cultural heritage of traditional Chinese culture,as well as enhancing the addresses' understanding of Chinese history and culture.While translating these citations,the translator needs to transmit the implication of the source text,making it possible for the target reader to perceive the information and appreciate Chinese culture.Previous studies which analyze the translation of cited ancient Chinese poetry and prose in Chinese leaders' speeches are mainly conducted in the field of Interpreting Studies,and most of the researches focus on translation norms and strategies,only a few of them studied the acceptance of the target text from the perspective of the reader or through quantitative approach.According to the statistics,Xi Jinping quotes 121 ancient Chinese poetry and prose in The Governance of China.This paper classifies these citations according to the six different translation strategies used by the translator,and selected 10 translations as representative examples.This paper analyzes the purpose of translating ancient Chinese poetry and prose in political texts from the perspective of skopos theory,examines whether the selected target texts have achieved the purpose of translation through the questionnaire,and shows the impact of different translation strategies on the understandability of the target text based on a quantitative analysis.This thesis constitutes of five chapters.The first chapter introduces the background,objective,significance,research methods,basic information of the book The Governance of China,the skopos and strategies of translating cited ancient Chinese poetry and prose in this book,and framework of this research.The second chapter introduces the definition,translation,characteristics,and principles of international publicity translation;reviews previous studies and summarizes achievements and problems in the field of international publicity translation.The third chapter elaborates the development,basic concepts,and principles of Skopos theory,and the role of text type.The fourth chapter uses SPSS Statistics to analyze the data collected fromquestionnaires,introduces basic information of the respondents,analyzes the reliability and validity of the questionnaire,analyzes and evaluates the impact of different translation strategies on the target texts.The fifth Chapter summarizes this research.The research results show following four points.1)Free translation is the most popular strategy in the translation of ancient Chinese poetry and prose in The Governance of China,it also produces target texts which is the easiest for reader to comprehend,except in one special case.2)The target text produced by substitution is rated as the most difficult one to perceive.3)The translator needs to use literal translation delicately,in that this method may create phrases or images which are unique in Chinese or China and can hinder the reader's process of understanding.4)The translator failed to compose the target texts in idiomatic English.In short,most readers find no difficulty in grasping the meaning of the translation,as for existing problems in the target text,the author proposes suggestion for better translation practice in the field of Political Publicity Translation.