A Practice Report On Chinese Translation Of English Political Texts

Nowadays, more and more people pay attention to political texts whose lecturerscomment domestic and overseas events from a political point. American presidentialinaugural addresses, which are the first show for newly-appointed presidents, are theimportant part of English political texts. The speeches are written by the presidents andtheir partners and then showed in oral form. Through these addresses, the politics,economy and culture of America are in full view. With the globalization, as two of thebiggest economies, Chinese and American pay attention to the culture, people’slivelihood and education each other. Moreover, it is important to enhance understandingthe political system of America. So studying the translation texts of Americanpresidential inaugural addresses matches the request of cross-cultural communicationand guides the development of translation practice.This paper is a practice paper based on the translation task. Five representativeAmerican presidential inaugural addresses are chosen as the source texts for thetranslation practice. After the introduction to the characteristics of American presidentialaddresses and the background of five presidential inaugural addresses, the writerdiscusses the translation strategies by comparative analysis of the translated works withthe reference Chinese versions. The paper shows that proper translation strategies likefour-letter words, realization of positive and negative meaning and changing part ofspeech, can make the translation more correct and vivid.Hope this practice report has reference and inspiration for the translation of thiskind of political texts.