| The Sino-US relations have currently become one of the hot topics in international studies.There are two landmark events in the modern history of SinoUS diplomacy—the signings of Wang-hea Treaty and Tientsin Treaty,which twice mark fundamental changes in China’s social status.A great number of historical materials record information about translation processes around the two landmark events.This thesis tries to further improve academic studies in this field through both textual and non-textual analyses on these translation activities based on historical archive study,endeavoring to figure out the relationship between them.Treaty is one kind of compound text with legal,diplomatic and political features,which can be used as assessment criteria for textual translation.First,legal feature determines that translators should observe the standards of accuracy and equivalence so as to transfer legal contents as precisely as possible.Second,diplomatic function of treaties demands that the involved parties should take cultural elements into consideration.Thus,translators should attach great importance to cultural conventions,value orientation,and emotional judgement of the targeted addresses.Third,the translation of treaties,as a main branch of political translation which possesses strong features of functionality and intentionality,has the potential for subjective interpretation,eventually leading to inequivalent translations and the phenomenon of manipulation.In the translation activities of treaties,extralinguistic factors have a profound impact on the textual translation,so it is inadequate to only focus on the textual aspect without setting great store by the non-textual elements.The skopos theory narrates the translation process which exactly matches up with the pragmatic process of treaties’ translation.It starts with the initiator and is in the full charge of translators who produce the translated text to the target addresses.In this process,the “translation brief” is necessary for building a connection between the textual aspect and non-textual aspect.In addition,the skopos theory also concerns the“expert identity” of translators and makes a reference to the translation subjectivity,reflecting on whether translators can realize the equivalent expression of translingual messages in political translation.Through the analysis of several mistranslations in the Sino-US treaties,it comes to a conclusion that it can indeed result in the problem of intentional mistranslations when there lacks an efficient scrutiny mechanism in the translation process.In order to further analyze the elements leading to this phenomenon,the thesis also attempts to concentrate on the extralinguistic factors that eventually get the freedom of translators out of control,including the historical background of signing treaties,the development of diplomatic translation systems,the information about translators’ identities and China’s attitude towards diplomacy.To sum up,the thesis attempts to elaborate on the treaties’ translation as a whole,mainly from the textual level and non-textual level within the framework of the skopos theory.The section of textual analysis will figure out practical functions and purposes of textual translations.The section of non-textual analysis will focus on non-linguistic factors with regard to history,culture,politics,etc.,to study their impacts on the textual translation.The thesis also takes notice of the interplay between the textual aspect and non-textual aspect in the process of treaties’ translation. |
