Translating Governmental Documents For International Interaction:A Communication-Theoretic Account

In today's social context with high levels of information and globalization,it is self-evident that external publicity is of great significance to a nation's development.Among the closely-related elements of external publicity,the quality of translation has a direct influence on target readers' understanding and acceptability,and the realization of expected communication effects.In terms of external publicity and its translation,the essence of both is a kind of cross-national,cross-lingual,and cross-cultural communication activity.Based on a theoretical analysis of communication theory,external publicity is divided into governmental external publicity and non-governmental external publicity from communicators' perspective.The former refers to communication activities initiated by governmental sectors or departments,aiming at introducing China to the world,so as to promote China's image on the global stage and boost its development.The latter one refers to communication activities attaching great importance to cultural contents initiated by non-governmental organizations or individuals in an informal manner but with good results in international communication.There lie differences between governmental external publicity and non-governmental external publicity in communicator,communication content,media,and audience etc,which directly lead to their respectively distinctive features and translation strategies.In this article,the publicity materials and translation strategies of governmental external publicity are paid much attention.And the formal governmental publicity material source is the government's working report which enjoys high authority.In combination with a report on the work of the government delivered at the Third Session of the 12th National People's Congress on March 5,2015,corresponding strategies are proposed mainly for the translation of culture-specific expressions.