A Study Of C-E Translation Strategies Of Political Texts From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

With the continuous enhancement of China's comprehensive national strength and constantly deepened dialogue and cooperation between China and other different foreign countries,foreigners from many other countries all want to know about our country.The annual government work report is released by Prime Minister of China State Council,which is a kind of authoritative publicity materials of our country.Its content touches on various areas of the country,including current politics,economy,education,science and technology,culture,people's livelihood and so on,serving as an authoritative channel for foreigners as well as Chinese people to get a comprehensive understanding of China's latest development trend and the current situation.However,the cultural differences such as many Chinese unique four-character idioms and common sayings,and linguistic differences such as the unique structure of Chinese language bring quite many difficulties for translators.Experts from the Central Compilation & Translation Bureau,an institution attached directly to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China,is responsible for the translation of the government work report.Therefore,the translation of the government work report has a good reference for the translators or English learners who are engaged in the translation of political texts.Thus it is of much necessity to carry out a thorough study on the translation of the government work report.This thesis takes skopos theory,which is proposed by German translator Hans Vermeer in the 80 s of last century,as the theoretical framework.Skopos theory is one of the most important translation theories of the German functionalism,which has gone through four phases.The first phase is represented by Reiss and his text typology.Reiss holds the view that different types of texts are suitable for different translation methods and different criticism criteria.Text type is the primary factor to take into consideration in choosing proper methods for translation.In the second phase,Vermeer puts forward the terminology "skopos theory" for the first time.In the view of Vermeer,any kinds of behavior including translation itself might be regarded as an action and there is a intention for any action.The word "skopos" is an academicterminology for the intention of a translation.Justa Holz-Manttari represents the third phase in the development process of skopos theory.She puts forward the new term "translational action" which is a more extensive conception than "translation".Translational action does not just refer to the act of transformation between two languages but a series of complicated actions and cooperation between all the experts from the clients to the translators.Therefore,the translators should also consider the needs of these collaborators during the translation process.The fourth phase is represented by Nord.She points out two deficiencies of the skopos theory.One problem is that a target text translated according to a certain translation purpose within the framework of skopos theory may meet the needs of only some of the readers but does not meet those of others.Another problem is that it is possible for translators to translate the source text in a way contrary to the intention of the original writer,thus leading to misinterpretation.Therefore,she puts forward the principle of function plus loyalty.Nord holds that adaptation is also one kind of translation method but adaptation must be done on the basis of the source text.The point here is that translators must inform the readers of what changes they have made in the translated text and explain clearly to the receivers the reason that they do so.Nord synthesizes the strong points and gets rid of the deficiencies of the radical function-oriented translation theories.Finally,the skopos theory known to us is formed,which includes the skopos rule,coherence rule and the fidelity rule.However,as a relatively new translation theory,few researches are done on the translation of political texts especially on the GWR under the guidance of skopos theory.Therefore,the author starts from this point and raises the following questions:(1)What are the lexical,syntactic,textual and rhetoric features of the GWR?(2)What are the suggested strategies for the C-E translation of the GWR 2017 at the lexical,syntactic,textual and rhetoric levels?From the analysis of the GWR,it is easy to know that the GWR is a kind of operative text,which emphasizes the influence on readers.The function of its English version is actually a means of foreign publicity of China and to facilitate the target readers to better understand the current situation of China's development.Skopostheory holds that the most important thing in translation activities is to achieve the predetermined purpose of translation,which is the first criterion to be observed in the process of translation.From this perspective,the principle guiding the translation of the GWR and the principle of the skopos theory are in full accord.Therefore,it is feasible to adopt skopos theory to guide the translation of the GWR.As a typical political text,the GWR has its own stylistic features.The author has concluded the lexical,syntactic,textual and rhetoric features of the GWR through analyzing the text.The main lexical features of the GWR include abbreviations,four-character words,category words and repetition.At the syntactic level,because Chinese language belongs to a paratactic language whose logic is not reflected by grammar but meaning,there are lots of non-subject sentences and long sentences without clear inner link appearing in the GWR.At the textual level,the whole GWR can be divided into three parts,that is,achievements done by the government in the past year,plans for the next year and the government's self-improvement.Then,there are various subtitles at different levels to draw forth a sub-fraction under each main part.Besides,each paragraph under those subtitles is well arranged with the first sentence expressing a specific theme.Therefore,although there is a large amount of information in the GWR,but it is well arranged owing to its clear textual structure.At the rhetoric level,the GWR is an official document which is used to convey facts and whose language style is plain and clear,so not many types of rhetorical devices can be found in the GWR.Parallelism and metaphor are the two dominant rhetorical devices which frequently appear in the GWR to help emphasize the tone or help express things in a more accurate and lively way.Combined with the translation examples in the 2017 GWR,the author has sorted out some translation strategies which are used to deal with the translation of these features.In the light of the lexical features,the author has sorted out four commonly used translation methods,that is,amplification,combination,omission and variation.In the light of lots of non-subject sentences and long sentences at the syntactic level,methods of adding subjects and dividing the long sentences into different sentence groups can be adopted.At the textual level,the translation of subtitles should bedifferent from normal sentences.For words with similar meaning,references and conjunctions should be used to make the article more coherent.At the rhetoric level,for the translation of parallelism and metaphor,the best way is to retain both the language form and the meaning of the source text but sometimes we can also choose to only maintain its original meaning if it is impossible to keep both of them.The stylistic features of the GWR and the according translation strategies are analyzed and summarized in this paper,and the feasibility of adopting skopos theory to guide the translation of political texts especially the translation of the GWR is confirmed in this paper.It is hoped that this study can provide a new way of thinking for translators of political texts.Translators can no longer be confined to the bondage of being absolutely faithful to the source text,but can adopt different translation methods according to the purpose of translation.And the summary of translation strategies in this paper can provide some reference and inspiration for translators and learners involved in the translation of political texts.