On Translation Of Xi Jinping’s Political Discourse From The Perspective Of Eco-translatology

Xi Jinping: The Governance of China II,containing a series of important speeches by President Xi Jinping from 2014 to 2017,aims to introduce China’s philosophy and path of development as well as its guidelines and policies to the international community.It is also a significant window for the world to better know about China.Since the publication of the English version of the second volume on November 7,2017,Xi Jinping: The Governance of China II has been published to more than 100 countries and regions around the world and has received wide attention and high praise from readers at home and abroad,providing a good sample for translation studies.The political terms with Chinese characteristics,quotations,four-character phrases and popular set phrases form the uniqueness of Xi Jinping’s political discourse.In the process of translation,how to represent the political discourse with Xi Jinping’s characteristics while reproducing the unique charm of Chinese language and culture is a great challenge for translators.The translation of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China II as a collection of political texts on current events,is politically sensitive and thus calls for preciseness in message delivery and effectiveness in communication.On the basis of accurately delivering the original information,the translator should mostly retain the cultural and political characteristics of the unique political discourse in the process of translation.This requires the translator to adapt to the bilingual translation ecological environment,make dynamic adaptations and selections,and consider the choice of diction for the translation from the linguistic,cultural and communicative dimension.That is why Eco-translatology theory is chosen as the theoretical perspective for this study.Most previous researches are mainly carried out from the additional translation perspectives of traditional translation approaches such as politics,the functional translation,relevance theory,which tend to draw conclusions of one-dimensioned understanding about national image and political consciousness of political texts.Eco-translatology to be applied in this study emphasizes translator’s “adaptation and selection” and “multi-dimensional integration”.Within the eco-translation paradigm,“Translation as Eco-balance”,“Translation as Textual Transplants”,and “Translation as Adaptation and Selection” are taken as its core concepts of Eco-translatology.Based on the above research framework,this thesis attempts to study Xi Jinping’s political discourse in Xi Jinping: The Governance of China II from the perspective of Eco-translatology.This thesis is primarily designed to answer the following questions:(1)How to classify Xi Jinping’s political discourse in this study?(2)In addition to the linguistic,cultural and communicative dimensions,what else dimension should be considered in the translation of Xi Jinping’s political discourse?(3)What eco-factors should the translators adapt to and what strategies and methods can be adopted during the process of translating Xi Jinping’s political discourse from the perspective of Eco-translatology?Through documentary study,theoretical deduction,illustration,classification and analysis,a few major findings have been obtained as follows:1)According to different discourse contents,language features and forms of expression,Xi Jinping’s political discourse can be classified into six categories: political terms with Chinese characteristics,ancient poetry and philosophical quotations,Chinese four-character phrases,parallel expressions,popular set phrases and political metaphors.It is proved that better translations of these categories of discourse can be achieved under the guidance of multi-dimensional transformations of Eco-translatology.2)Due to the special political status of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China II,translators should pay special attention to the political sensitivity and political accuracy of Xi Jinping’s discourse when they selectively adapt to the political translation ecology.Correspondingly,one more dimension—the political dimension should be added to the three dimensions of Eco-translatology when analyze Xi Jinping’s political discourse,thus ensuring that political discourse translation goes well in line with China’s political orientation and needs.3)Because of the particularity of translating Xi Jinping’s political discourse,the translator’s subjectivity exerts only limited influence.However,under the guidance of Eco-translatology,the translator is still supposed to select appropriate eco-translation strategies and methods like multi-dimensional transformations,eco-environmental supplements or reconstruction as well as inclination on original ecology or target ecology,to take initiative in the adaptation to eco-environment and represent the original political meaning and style,so as to achieve a translation with a high degree of holistic adaptation and selection.All in all,in the process of translating political discourse,the translator should not only be faithful to the connotation and style of the original language,but also take the personal style of the state leader into account,while considering the needs of foreign readers and innovatively representing the features of political discourse with Chinese characteristics in order to realize the translation pursuit of “doing things with translation” as advocated by Eco-translatology.