Explicitation Of Personal Pronouns In Political Texts

As one of the "translation universals",explicitation is an important strategy in translation.Over the past decades,plenty of research has focused on explicitation in translation.Additionally,since personal pronouns play important roles in the cohesion of languages,many studies also explore the explicitation of personal pronouns in translation.Previous research on this topic mostly investigates the explicitation of personal pronouns in literary translation or only conducts an inter-lingual comparison.However,in this study,the Report on the Work of the Government of China and the States of the Union Address of the US are chosen as the materials to explore the characteristics of personal pronouns in original Chinese,translated English,and original English political texts.The deliverer of the selected Report on the Work of the Government is the Chinese Premiere Li Keqiang,while the speakers of the chosen States of the Union Address are former US president Donald Trump and present US president Joe Biden.All selected materials are reports on the performance of each country in specific years.The two groups of government reports are both delivered from 2018 to 2022,a time span of five years.A parallel corpus and a comparable corpus are built by the author.Based on the data collected,this study examines the explicitation of personal pronouns in Chinese-English translation of political texts.There are two research questions in this thesis.Firstly,in C-E political translation,is there a tendency of explicitation in the translation of personal pronouns’?If so,what are the possible causes?Secondly,in C-E political translation,are there any differences between original English and translated English in the use of personal pronouns?If so,what are the differences and their possible causes?After analyzing the standard frequencies of the three personal pronouns in the two corpora,the thesis finds that:firstly,there is an evident tendency of explicitation of personal pronouns in C-E political translation,specifically,the third personal pronoun has the highest degree of explicitation,after which is the first personal pronoun,while that of the second personal pronoun is the lowest;secondly,there is a difference in the use of personal pronouns between the original English and the translated English,to be specific,except for "its" and "we/us",the standard frequencies of all personal pronouns are higher in the original English than those in the translated English,especially for the second personal pronouns.The study concludes with a discussion of the possible reasons for the above phenomenon.Specifically,there are systematic differences between Chinese and English,with English having a much higher degree of formalization than Chinese,and Chinese using pronouns as little as possible,while English does the opposite.The plural form of the first personal pronoun "we" has the function of closing the distance between the speaker and listeners,but can also reflect a certain degree of authority when used in political texts.The second personal pronoun can refer to anyone in English,playing an indefinite role and thus making the speaker’s words more friendly and acceptable to listeners.The singular form of the third personal pronoun "it" is an endophoric role in English and appears frequently in translated English.This thesis explores the distinctions in the use of personal pronouns in the Chinese-English translation of political texts,and thus may shed light on how translators can deal with the translation of personal pronouns in the translation of political texts.