The Acceptability Of English Translation Of Chinese Political Neologisms To English Natives

Publicity-oriented translation,one of the most vital parts of our country's external publicity,plays an indispensable role in global communication.The effectiveness of external publicity,to a great extent,depends on the quality and accuracy of the publicity-oriented translation which has a direct influence on the target audience.In the new era of China,political neologisms with distinct Chinese characteristics have been created continuously,and this poses a challenging task to translators for inappropriate translation may lead to misunderstanding,therefore effectiveness of external publicity becomes crucial.However,most research on this aspect has focused on strategies of translation while the understanding and acceptance of the target audience towards the translation of Chinese political neologisms is not sufficiently explored.In order to investigate the acceptability of Chinese political neologisms to English natives,this thesis studies the 25 English translations of the 16 Chinese political neologisms selected according to the definition and classification of Chinese political neologisms from the articles in four main culture columns Views of China,Life Style,Culture,and Transcending Times of The Periodical of Confucius Institute from 2009 to 2016 and attempts to answer the following questions:1)To English natives,what's the acceptability of the Chinese political neologisms with conventionalized and fixed translations?2)As for those neologisms with different translated versions,what is their respective acceptability? Which one is more or the most acceptable?3)What is the correlation between the acceptability and English natives' social attributes?Both quantitative and qualitative methods are employed.48 English natives participated in the questionnaire designed based on Gestalt pictures and three participated in the think-aloud protocol experiments in which participants' verbalization was analyzed based on the Appraisal Theory to manifest their attitudes towards the translation.The results are shown as follows.First of all,for the 11 Chinese political neologisms with only one version of translation,four of them are not acceptable while the rest seven are more acceptable and understandable.The more abstract,concise in structure,profound in its political connotations or historic and cultural background the Chinese political neologism is,the harder for English natives to understand and accept,and the lower the acceptability is.Second,among the altogether five Chinese political neologisms having more than one versions of translation,except“????”,the rest four neologisms'respective translated versions have various acceptability.The results reveal that the most acceptable translations of the four Chinese political neologisms respectively are“the Chinese dream”(???),“the‘Belt and Road'initiative”(????),“ties”(????),and“closer economic ties and trade”(????).Possible explanations of the participants'low acceptance of the translations can be summarized into three points:the differences in ideologies,socio-cultures,and languages.Third,Chinese competence and level of education are two main factors which have correlations with the translation acceptability.This research is meaningful for translators and news media to select appropriate translations in external publicity in that it provides empirical evidence.The research can also provide a possible model for future studies investigating the target audience's understanding and acceptance of the translations of the words and expressions of other genres such as China-specific idioms,proverbs and allegorical sayings.