Effect Of Political Factors On Translation Practice

Translation practice come along with cultural communication and exchanges of mankind and it is marked with political nature. There has been some research of traditional translation theory on the impact of political factors on translation practice. In this paper, political factors in translation practice will be discussed with the book AMERICA:Imagine A World Without Her as a case study. We will focus on the reason and result of the impact and the strategies we used during translation.In addition, political factors also have an effect on translation criticism. As a practical tool, translation sometimes serves the political purpose; it will be inaccuracy when evaluating translation work simply from the view of literature and faithfulness. Political factors as a non-lingual factor should be one of standards. We should evaluate translation works comprehensively; only in this way can we have an all-round understanding of the style and quality of translation work.AMERICA:Imagine A World Without Her is a political book written by an Indian-American political commentator and author Dinesh D’Souza. On the basis of an hypothetical premise that the United States of America doesn’t exist, the book discusses domestic affairs in the US and current world situation in an comprehensive way. As a newly rising power, China’s international status and image are mentioned in the book. When translating the book, I found that China-related chapters are sometimes hard to handle because of political environment in China. It requires translator to take both consideration of faithfullness of the original text and Chinese readers’cognitive ability and reading expectation. So, the political factor is an important part in translation criticism.