The Chinese-English Translation Of Political Terms From A Cultural Compatibility Perspective

With the rapid advancement of China's modernization drive, China's national force has stepped into a new high. China has played a more important part in the international political arena. China has gotten in touch with outside countries more frequently with the development of multi-level and multidisciplinary communication. Meanwhile, China desires to know more about the international community. The annual Chinese government work report reviews the major achievements of the previous year and makes an overall plan for the government work in the following year or the next five years, which covers a wide range of areas such as economy, politics and environmental protection. It is invariably an authoritative information channel to get a macroscopic view of current development in China. Therefore, the translation of Chinese government work reports plays a decisive role in promoting the image of China. Political terms, as an indispensable part of the Chinese government work report and with rich cultural connotations, usually mirror the current development trends in China.The present thesis studies the Chinese-English translation of political terms from the perspective of cultural compatibility. The Cultural Compatibility, which is a key concept in the cultural translation, refers to a good comprehension of cultural meaning, good reader reception as well as good aesthetic judgment. It often applies to the analysis of literary works concerning the aesthetic values and readers'acceptance thereof. This thesis attempts to explore the translation of political terms based on the principle of cultural compatibility. It aims to faithfully and precisely transfer the cultural connotations of political terms and thus to provide a new angle and perspective in the translation study of political terms.The whole thesis consists of six chaptersThe first chapter serves as the introduction part which briefly introduces the research topic and goal of the study as well as specifies the significance of the research and research method applied in this research. At the same time, it reviews the previous studies on the English translation of political terms and researches related to the principle of cultural compatibility.Chapter Two investigates the linguistic features of Chinese government work reports with an emphasis on the lexical properties.Chapter Three points out some typical problems encountered in the translation practice of political terms and explores them from the intralingustic and extralingustic perspectives.Chapter Four summarizes the causes of these problems by examining some examples from the English version of Chinese government work report of 2009 issued by the Chinese Translation and Compilation Bureau and focuses on the influences of cultural elements.Chapter Five is the most important part of the thesis, which studies the selected examples of the Chinese government work reports from the perspective of cultural compatibility and suggests solutions to current problems in translating political terms. What's more, the author testifies the feasibility and validity of proposed translation strategies by means of in-depth interviews with international students and foreign teachers in the English Learning Center of Shantou University and presents revised versions of certain political terms.Chapter Six concludes the whole thesis and lists the major findings of this paper as well as indicates some limitations of the present research and suggestions on further studies on this topic.