Translation Of2014Report On The Work Of The Government From The Theory Of Thematic Structure

The thematic structure theory includes the theme-rheme and the thematicprogression, with the former first employed by Mathesius and the latter by F. Danes.Later, under the framework of Halliday’s Functional Systematic Grammar, thethematic structure theory has aroused scholars’ interests home and abroad and led to avariety of studies on the themes and thematic progression patterns in various texts, withmedical discourses, advertisements and news reports the focus. As China’s nationalstrength continues to increase, the translation of China’s political texts becomesincreasingly important. Despite its effectiveness in translation, the thematic structuretheory has only received specific attention in the translation of political texts.This thesis conducts a comparative study of the Chinese version of Report on theWork of the Government (referred to as C-RWG hereafter) and the English version ofReport on the Work of Government (hereafter referred to as E-RWG) for year2014. Itexamines the types of themes and their distributions in these two texts; identifies andanalyzes the different patterns of thematic progression; and summarizes the strategiesadopted when dealing with the themes and thematic progression patterns.Following are the findings. In C-RWG for year2014, the zero-themes account for59.15%, the simple themes37.87%, the multiple themes1.91%, and the clausal themes1.07%. In E-RWG for year2014, no zero-theme is present and the simple themes takeup87.07%, the multiple themes10.5%, and the clausal themes2.43%. The thematicprogression patterns applied in both texts are the linear pattern, the constant themepattern, the constant rheme pattern and the intersection pattern. Among them, theconstant theme pattern and the constant rheme pattern are more common. Theyfacilitate the audience to grasp the intention of the speaker and spot the intendedinformation with more convenience and less time. It is also found that when dealingwith the themes and thematic progression patterns, without distortion of the originaltexts’ intention, preserving the original is the first choice at the macro level. At themicro level, themes and thematic progression patterns may be restructured slightly ordramatically to be in consistence with the convention of the target language.All the findings in this study will make a contribution to the deep understandingand translation practice of political texts.