On C-E Translation Of Government Documents Based On Functional Equivalence Theory

Government document aims at stating major issues and conveying the latest policies to the public,and accurate translation of it is of vital significance in the context of globalization.The Outline Development Plan for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area(hereinafter referred to as The Outline),a government document,as the first official guiding principle for the all-round development in the GuangdongHong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area,has its English version issued simultaneously.Has the C-E translation of The Outline realized functional equivalence,or the most adequate translation of the message involved? If so,in what aspects has the translation achieved equivalence? And,what translation strategies and methods are adopted by the translators to achieve the equivalence? What light will it shed to the translation of similar government documents? This thesis attempts to answer these questions by synthesizing ideas from Nida’s functional equivalence and linguistics,with a view to developing new understandings of translation strategies for government documents that have different styles from other genres,and of functional equivalence theory as well.The project,via a method of contrastive studies,analyzed the bilingual outline from three levels(i.e.lexicon,sentence,and discourse),showing that functional equivalence has been realized and that the translators have employed appropriate strategies and skills to achieve the equivalence of the expressive function,the informative function,and the vocative function on the three levels,which makes the English version of The Outline as readable and understandable.On the lexicon level,in order to realize the expressive and vocative function,concerning political terms explanations based on the cultural background are provided and free translation and transformation are adopted regarding collocations of high-frequency.On the sentence level,for the parataxis-focused subject-free Chinese sentences,literal translation is avoided whereas addition is made to achieve informative function.For long and complex sentences,the translators have employed omission or division to actualize expressive function between the TT and ST.On discourse level,given that the government document is multi-paragraphed without an obvious inner logic between sentences or paragraphs,the translators have used division and conjunction,added linkers and used cohesive devices appropriately to connect different phrases,sentences or paragraphs into one logically-organized section so as to realize the informative and vocative function.It concludes that functional equivalence,or,the most adequate translation of the message in question concerning the translation of government document is still the top priority,where form serves content,strategies are flexible,and the best translation is the one from which the TT readers can have the maximally equivalent message with the ST readers.