Research On The Communication And Translation Of Biographies On Chinese Leaders Written By Foreign Scholars

Biographies of Chinese leaders written by foreign scholars may contain features of literature works,research papers and political materials.While there exists much research on the translation of literature and technical texts,studies on works of this kind remain in its infancy.In the case study on the Chinese version of Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China,this paper seeks to describe the process of its translation and communication.It therefore aims to answer these questions,namely,how these works get translated and spread in China? Who acted as gatekeepers in the process? And what were their gatekeeping criteria?Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China is a typical example of works written by foreign scholars to study the life of a key Chinese leader.It was translated into Chinese and later sold well in both mainland China and Hong Kong.This paper analyses its translation and communication when imported into China and states its analysis in four chapters.The first chapter introduces the research purpose,which functions as an overview on communication studies in translation discipline and reviews the research on the book Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China.The second chapter provides a theoretical basis for the paper by combining the “5W” model,gatekeeper theory and comes up with a theoretical structure for later study.The third chapter analyses the gatekeeping and communication process of Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China,studies the author,publishers and translators as gatekeepers and examines why certain contents were included while others were abandoned.It also depicts how translated works were made known to the public and what was the market's reaction.The last part draws a conclusion on the findings of the study and reveals what could be further studied in the future.While translating into china,the gatekeeper,hereby referred to as the publisher,selects other participants in the process,including the author and the translators according to the public narration and other factors in its targeted market.It also decides what and how to translate by targeting the future readers.Translators,however,though paid by the gatekeeper and follow its lead,may resist the narration and keep some of the narration which should be deleted.Here they perform as gatekeepers as well by editing and translating,which allows new narration to come into the public narration.Targeted readers are also included in the communication process as they could decide whether the sales will be good or not.All the sectors in the communication models influence each other and forms a complicated working mechanism.