A Study On The Translation Of Government Work Report From The Perspective Of Functionalism

With more and more exchanges and cooperation in various fields between China and other countries, people worldwide are eager to the know the situation of China. In this process, translation plays a decisive role. The2013Government Work Report (also called The Report on the Work of the Government, hereinafter referred to as the GWR), reflects the latest and the most authoritative government work conditions at present and puts forward future plans. Nevertheless, analysis of its translation strategies is far from overall and concrete. As a political document, it requires a timely and accurate study on the corresponding translation strategies.With the guidance of German functionalism, this thesis aims at conducting a thorough and specific research on the translation strategies by analyzing and comparing some Chinese and English examples excerpted from the2013GWR, so as to provide useful reference and advice for the translation of similar political documents. This thesis gives a summary of the major ideas of German functionalism, and probes into the guidance of these theories to the study on the Chinese-English translation strategies for the2013GWR. On the basis of analyzing the linguistic characteristics and translating principles of the GWR, this thesis studies the translation strategies for the2013GWR at four levels:lexical, syntactical, discoursal and rhetorical.Through illustration analysis, many translation strategies prove to be feasible in the study, for example, at the lexical level, free translation can be used in the translation of typically Chinese words; at the syntactical level, addition of a subject or voice conversion can help make a non-subject sentence complete; at the discoursal level, cohesion can be achieved by adding reference words and conjunctions; at the rhetorical level, literal translation can be applied to the translation of parallel structures. Application of these translation strategies can maintain the information consistency, overcome the cultural obstacles and achieve the communicative purpose in the translation process.This thesis concludes that the English translation of the2013GWR is a cross-cultural communicative activity with target readers as the center and target culture as orientation; German functional translation theories are suitable for the study on the2013GWR translation strategies and provide necessary theoretical guidance for it; the 2013GWR translation strategies are of great practical significance by offering reference for the translation of other political documents.