A Study Of The Hybridity Of The English Translation Of Chinese Political Texts

Chinese political texts play a very important role in demonstrating Chinese government's standpoints on political, economic, social and diplomatic affairs. Political speeches rendered by leaders of the country and the Party are representative cases of the type. Therefore, the translation of Chinese political texts is of great significance. However, their translations are often criticized from the angle of Chinese English, English with Chinese characteristics on vocabulary, syntax and the way in which the thoughts are shaped into words. Many scholars studying the translation of Chinese political texts focus on how to avoid Chinese English and to produce the idiomatic target language. In this thesis, the author does it from an entirely different perspective. She holds that the translation of Chinese political texts inevitably bears a marked brand of the source text and presents a feature of hybridity with fidelity as its general translation principle because Chinese political texts are usually marked with obvious imprints of unique culture and language.Hybridity, a concept used in multiple disciplines, is a hot topic in translation studies nowadays. Generally speaking, a hybrid refers to a new product originating from two different species. This product embodies new features different from its "parents" besides inheriting some characteristics from them. In translation studies, the concept of hybridity is used to describe the hybrid property of the translated text in which foreign and accessible cultural and linguistic components to the target reader are mixed. The hybridity of translated texts makes them becoming a unique type of texts distinct from those originally produced in the target language and culture. As for translation methods, a hybrid translation is the product resulting from employing translation methods of foreignization and domestication within the same translated text.It can be said that translations are all hybrids because we can always find foreignness in them. To justify this statement, this thesis chooses the typical representative of Chinese political texts——The Report on the Work of the Government in 2011 to studies the hybridity of its English Translation. The author attempts to find out the expressions of the hybridity of the translated Report and analyze the reasons why so much foreignness is retained in the translated Report, which causes its hybridity, and the functions such a hybrid translation can fulfill. By doing these analyses, it is hoped to show that the hybridity of the translated Report is necessary and inevitable.