A Study On Translation For International Publicity From The Perspective Of Translation Ethics

Recent years have witnessed China’s growing national strength,and how to construct a good image of China in the international community has become one of the most significant tasks for translation for international publicity.As a powerful way of spreading Chinese cultures,translation for international publicity has been a research focus in the field of translation studies.In the 1980 s,translation ethics,proposed by Antoine Berman,sparked huge discussions among domestic and foreign researchers.Of all other studies on translation ethics,five models of translation ethics put forward by Andrew Chesterman in 2001 are thought to be one of the most systematic and influential one.By a thorough analysis,it has been detected that translations of literary works are the main focuses of current studies while translations of political texts are still underexplored.Therefore,this study is an attempt to look into translations of political documents,with focus on those of Government Work Reports(GWRs)from the perspective of Chesterman’s five models of translation ethics.The study comprehensively examines the translations of GWRs(from 2013 to 2016)in five aspects guided by Chesterman’s translation ethics models.Concretely speaking,how the translations of political texts follow the five translation ethics models is investigated.Qualitative and quantitative methods are employed to look into the study by enabling the subjects to be examined from different perspectives.The research findings reveal that not only the contents and forms of original texts,but also Otherness such as the political policies put forward by Chinese leaders are accurately represented in translations of GWRs,which reflects the requirements of ethics of representation;Besides,by the analysis of words with high frequency,omission,adaptation and literal translation are employed to make the translations of GWRs convey the real meaning of those words,thus being wisely loyal to the client — Chinese government.This reveals the essence of ethics of service.It is also found the hint of ethics of communication in the translations of GWRs.When those items with Chinese characteristics such as metaphors or abbreviations with numbers hinder the target readers’ understanding,certain translation techniques are employed,such as free translation and amplification in order to meet the target readers’ demand for information that caters to understanding and communicating with each other successfully.Furthermore,certain examples selected from the translations of GWRs embody the language norms of the target culture by reducing the redundant words or clarifying logical relations via grammatical and lexical ways.It is also discovered that ethics of commitment is incarnated in some examples from the translations of GWRs.This thesis offers a new perspective for the studies on translations of GWRs and broadens the scope of the studies on translation ethics.It also provides the foundation for studies on translation for international publicity from the perspective of translation ethics.