A Study On The Translation Of Political Texts From The CDA Perspective

The Report on the Work of Government(RWG),delivered by the Chinese Premier at the annual meeting of National People's Congress(NPC)and involving developments in politics,economy,culture,diplomacy,and public well-being,is an authoritative source for the international community to learn about the national conditions and developments in China.Translation of this annual RWG is,therefore,getting increasingly important.While existing studies of its translation are mostly limited to linguistic features,this thesis will approach it using the framework of critical discourse analysis(CDA)based on exploring the relations between its linguistic forms and the underlying ideology.In translation studies,systematic functional grammar(SFG)is often applied to detailed text analysis while CDA is used to analyze the social rationale for a particular linguistic phenomenon.However,a combination of the two analytic tools,though pragmatic in doing translation studies,has not yet gained enough attention in China.Therefore,this thesis is an effort in this aspect,exploring the influence factors hidden behind the texts by using the combined tools.CDA advocates that language is determined by social functions.Differences in linguistic structure are the manifestations of differences in ideology.Based on previous studies of political translation and the application of CDA to translation studies,this thesis makes a comparison between the linguistic features of the source text and those of the target text in terms of lexical classification,modality,transitivity and transformation from the CDA perspective to identify the changes in the translated version in these aspects.Socio-ideological causes of such changes are analyzed,revealing the relationship between the shifts of linguistic forms and ideological factors.Therefore,how political manipulation is realized through selection of different linguistic forms in the translation of RWG and how the translation sustains the political power in the society through the selection of linguistic forms can be demonstrated.It can be concluded that in the translation of political discourses like RWG,the ideological factors have a great influence on the choices and applications of linguistic forms,which in return influence the spreading and understanding of ideological meaning.In addition,the application of CDA enables us to carry out a micro-analysis on both Chinese and English texts,allowing us to go beyond the texts and find out how ideology and social contexts have an impact on texts.Thus it not only reveals the causesof the differences,but also furthers people's understanding of translation.The CDA approach can help improve the translator's ability in understanding the differences in linguistic structures and ideologies between the source text and the target text,so that the ideological meaning of the source text can be expressed in a way that facilitates the target readers to accept,and the quality of the translation of RWG can be better improved.