On Functionalist Approaches And Their Application To C-E Translation Of Political Writings

With the development of integration and globalization, translation is playing an increasingly important role in the exchange between China and the western world. The significance of translation study should not be neglected. Due to the special characteristics of political writings, there is more likely a tendency of word-for-word translation in rendering the style. Focusing on the common phenomenon of over-foreignization, the author of this thesis makes a tentative research on the translation of political writings in light of functionalist approaches, aiming at discovering proper translation strategies and methods, improving translation quality and facilitating communication.Functional approaches, based on action theory, hold that every translational action has certain purposes, and that different translation purposes and communicative functions call for varied translation strategies. The approaches require translators to decide different translation strategies and methods according to diverse translation purposes and target-text functions. Meanwhile, functionalists also emphasize the essentiality of source-text analysis. In their point of view, there must be a certain correlation between text type and translation strategy.Text typology and Skopostheorie are applied to a detailed analysis on the text type and target-text functions of political writings. And then with additional reference to a contrastive study between the Chinese and English political writings, a conclusion is drawn finally. Although political writings belong to expressive texts in text typology's terms, the functions or the Skopos of their translations are not just limited to expression. Besides this function, political writings are also aimed at informing and persuading. It means that it is impossible to obtain an ideal version by employing one single translation strategy or method. Only by adopting varied domesticating and foreignizing methods flexibly on the basis of balancing the authoritativeness of the original and the communicativeness of the translation, can translators create faithful and intelligible renderings and achieve intended translation functions.The author of this thesis expects that this study may shed some light on the current study and practice of political writings.