On Power Relationship-Manipulated Strategies In Translating Chinese Political Discourse Into English

Accompanied by surging international exchanges, translation has witnessed newopportunities and challenges. Featuring seriousness and authoritativeness, the translation ofChinese political discourse, which plays an important role in transmitting China’s views to theworld, is inevitably restricted by a number of factors. The thesis attempts to explore howpower relationship influences translation strategies in translating Chinese political discoursefrom the perspective of Michel Foucault’s Power Discourse Theory. There are two researchquestions in the thesis. The first one is what kind of power relationship exists in translatingChinese political discourse from French philosopher’s Power Discourse Theory. And thesecond one is what translations strategies are adopted by translators in the light of these powerrelationship.Foucault’s Power Discourse theory gives a systematic description of the relationshipbetween the three most important concepts of the theory: power, discourse and knowledge. InFoucault’s theory, power is present in all fields that human exist; Discourse is the presentationof power, and all power realizes itself through discourse; Power, in essence, is the power ofdiscourse, which functions in knowledge transmission and discourse control. power does notonly refer to political power, but all other influences. Economy and culture are also integralparts of “power”.Chapter4, the key chapter of the thesis, attempts to explore how power relationshipaffects strategy selection in the process of translating political discourse with distinctiveChinese features. Some examples of typical translation strategies, such as transliteration plusexplanation, literal translation, adaptation and free translation are presented, and then thethesis gives some explanations as to why these strategies are adopted from Foucault’s PowerDiscourse Theory and analyzes the influences posed by power relationship. The authorbelieves that power relationship poses significant influence on strategy selection in translatingChinese political discourse, and translators are always restricted by power relationshipconsciously or unconsciously. A translator dealing with Chinese political discourse whoalways bears power relationship in mind may fulfill his/her job better.