The Research On The Japanese Translation Of Political Rhetoric From The Perspective Of Nida’s Translation Theory

The wide dissemination of Xi Jinping’s works around the world provides a new approach to the study of the “image of China shaped by itself” in the international community.The political rhetoric embodied in Xi Jinping’s works fulfill several functions,such as explaining the governing concepts of China,spreading the message of cooperation and win-win,and demonstrating the unique charisma of this state leader.Guided by Nida’s translation theory,this thesis studies the translation methods regarding the political rhetoric in Xi Jinping’s works through three dimensions,namely language,culture and audience,so as to find out what kinds of translation methods would better deliver China’s voice and improve the situation in the international discourse system of “Western voice prevailing over China’s voice”.It is hoped to actively shape the sound and fair public opinion about China in the international community and create a favorable international climate of opinion about China.This thesis explores the ways to enable Japanese audience to better understand China from the perspective of translation in the information era so as to shape China’s sound image and extend China’s international influence.This thesis extracts the Chinese political rhetoric from the series of “Excerpts of the Discourses made by Xi Jinping” and compares the Japanese translation of the same political rhetoric from the first and second volumes of The Governance of China.Questionnaire is employed as the main method,with interview as the supplementary method,so as to find out the similarities and differences in the translation and explore the underlying reasons.Based on the questionnaire results,this thesis analyzes the correlation between the Japanese translation of political rhetoric and factors related to the audience,including their age,gender,occupation,educational background,with or without the travel experience to China,and their level of Chinese language proficiency.The questionnaire and interview are summarized,and the strategies of Japanese translation of political rhetoric are discussed.Nida’s translation theory covers a wide range of aspects,including the analysis of parts of speech,semantic analysis,core sentence analysis,translation process analysis,functional equivalence,cross-cultural communication and receptor’s response.This thesis categorizes them into three dimensions: language,culture and audience.The chapter of language dimension analyzes the phenomena of shifts in the translation process of political rhetoric from the perspective of analysis of parts of speech,namely object words,event words,abstracts,and relationals.Based upon the chain analysis,structure analysis and componential analysis in semantic analysis put forward by Nida,this thesis adds a new technique “logical analysis” and discusses its application in the Japanese translation of political rhetoric.The purpose of translation is for cross-cultural communication.The essence of translation is not only the transformation of language,but also the transformation of culture.This thesis analyzes the correlation between the cultural phenomena and the Japanese translation of political rhetoric from the perspective of cultural dimension.The convergence of Chinese culture and Japanese culture allows the Japanese translation of certain Chinese political rhetoric to have an equivalent counterpart.The phenomenon of cultural coincidence allows the dynamic equivalence in terms of semantics after the necessary re-ordering of the inherent elements in the source language culture.Cultural parallelism,cultural vacancy,and cultural conflict are the concrete manifestations of cultural diversity of mankind.In such cases,translators need to achieve functional equivalence by means of literal translation plus annotation,interpretive translation,creative translation and other translation methods.This thesis reveals Xi Jinping’s attitude towards the translation through his speeches on different occasions and his employment of political rhetoric.He hopes to tell Chinese stories well,spread Chinese voices,and is committed to achieving mass communication,group communication,and interpersonal communication.The translation team from Central Compilation and the translation team from Translation Bureau and China Foreign Languages Publishing Administration differs in their translation concepts.The former focuses on the transmission of the original text and tends to be close to the author;the latter advocates the dissemination of the original text’s meaning and tends to be close to the readers.Based upon the questionnaire results,this thesis classifies the audience of the Japanese translation of political rhetoric into three types,namely friendly audience,suspicious audience and hostile audience.Different translation strategies are elaborated in this thesis to cope with different types of audience.This thesis integrates Nida’s translation theory and applies it into the study of the Japanese translation of political rhetoric.A new technique is put forward in this thesis,which enriches the semantic analysis of Nida.Different cultural phenomena embodied in the Japanese translation of political rhetoric are summarized,including cultural convergence,cultural coincidence,cultural parallelism,cultural vacancy and cultural conflict.The relationship among language transformation,cultural features and receptor response in the Japanese translation of political rhetoric are analyzed in detailed.The summary of the translation strategies regarding political rhetoric from Chinese into Japanese enriches the research findings in the field of the Japanese translation of political rhetoric.