A Study Of The Chinese-English Translation Of The Government Work Reports From The Perspective Of Skoposthorie

With the rapid development in all aspects of the society and economy in recent several decades, China has played a more and more important role among the countries of the world. In view of this, the westerners who are looking forward to cooperating with China want to acquaint with the principles and policies of our government. The Government Work Reports includes a variety of information on the social, economic and cultural current development status and the future planning, which can provide the westerners with the assess to learn the real conditions of our country. Consequently, the translation of the Government Work Reports is playing a more and more important part in the communication and cooperation with the outside world. This paper will analyze the Chinese-English translation of the Government Work Reports.This thesis will study the application of Skopostheorie to the translation of the Government Work Reports. The latest five years Government Work Reports from2008to2013will serve as the subject of the study. First of all, as an authoritative document, the Government Work Reports will definitely take on some special characteristics, and the illustration of its linguistic features will comprise an essential part of the thesis. The thesis will analyze the Chinese version of the Government Work Reports at the word level and sentence level and rhetoric level. Second, Skopostheorie, as the theoretical foundation, will get the thorough explanation in the thesis. Consequently, the core rules of Skopostheorie will be discussed, which will provide guidance for the Chinese-English translation of the Government Work Reports. Third, on the basis of figuring out the language features of the Government Work Reports, the translation methods of the Government Work Reports will be discussed under the guidance of Skopostheorie. Generally speaking, this thesis will endeavor to search for the appropriate translation strategies to guide the whole translation process of the Government Work Reports. In this way, we may grasp the suitable way that the report has taken to give an account of work to the domestic readers and meanwhile apprehend how its rendition performs the intended function of propagandizing the principles and policies to the westerners. Then one may understand that on the basis of the proper translation, the cooperation, communication and mutual understanding between China and the outside world could be further promoted.This thesis includes the following several parts:the expounding on the linguistic features and purpose analysis of the Government Work Reports, the main ideas of Skopostheorie, and the application of the three rules of Skopostheorie to find out appropriate translation methods and strategies. The emphasis of the paper will be placed on the application of the three rules of Skopostheorie in the choice of translation methods and translation strategies according to different linguistic features of the Government Work Reports. The purpose of the translation of the Government Work Reports is to show the real China to the world and let the target readers to know China in a more comprehensive way. First of all, skopos rule believes that translation purpose determines translation strategies and methods. Different translation strategies and methods can be used in order to fulfill the expected purpose and function of the Government Work Reports. Therefore, both the translation strategy domestication and foreignization can be adopted. There are many methods such as liberal translation, interpretive translation and annotation which belong to domestication in the translation of some word with Chinese characteristics and some abbreviated words, which can make the rendition become more intelligible to the target receivers. Literal translation is also adopted when the words can find its correspondence in the target language in both grammar and meaning, which can make the rendition keep faithful to the original text. Liberal translation, interpretive translation and annotation belong to domestication, which means bring the foreign culture closer to the readers in the target culture. While literal translation belong to foreignization which means the translation is source language culture-oriented. Second, coherence rule claims that the rendition must have an internal consistency and be understandable and acceptable for target receivers. That is to say, the rendition should be target language culture oriented, and target receivers centered. The rendition should accord with the idiomatic usage of English. In view of this, the translation strategy domestication should be used. Various methods can be employed accordingly, for example, nominalization in the translation of some verbs; substitution, omission, and variation in the translation of some repeated words. At the translation of the sentence level, various techniques can be adopted such as the addition of subject, the adoption of passive voice, and the adoption of "there be" in the translation of non-subject sentences, subordination in the translation of coordinate clauses, and restrictive attributive clauses and non-attributive clauses in the translation of the attributive clauses. Finally, the thesis explores the application of fidelity rule in the Chinese-English translation of the Government Work Report. Fidelity rule holds that the rendition is expected to be maximally faithful to the original text. In this case, the translation strategy foreignization should be used. Transliteration should be applied to translate some names of places, people and specific culture-loaded words; and parallelism should be employed to translate the parallel structured sentences.The paper explores the Chinese-English translation of the Government Work Reports from a new perspective. And after the detailed analysis of the English version of the Government Work Reports, the guiding role of Skopostheorie could be better comprehended by the translators. This paper may offer some effective translation methods and strategies to the translation of the Government Work Reports and other similar political documents.