A Report On The C-E Translation Of A History Of Contemporary Chinese Diplomatic Thoughts

With the rise of China’s comprehensive national power, international standing, and influence, the international society has been more curious about China, and become eager to know more about what is occurring in China. Meanwhile, China has put forward a "Chinese Culture goes global" strategy in order to adapt to the tendency of globalization and enhance soft national power. Hence, the translation of Chinese materials and making them available for other nations has become more important. As an important way for foreign publicity, the translation of political documents is a vital source for peoples around the world to.know our nation’s political system, policies and fundamental realities. However, as the political documents have the strong political sensibility and the profound brands of Chinese culture and ideology, the translation for them is difficult and requires accuracy. Mistake can not be allowed, otherwise, they will cause grave consequences.This thesis takes the first chapter of A History of Contemporary Chinese Diplomatic Thoughts as the object of translation. A History of Contemporary Chinese Diplomatic Thoughts introduces the changes of thoughts in the diplomacy since the foundation of the People’s Republic of China, and its first chapter mainly studies the foreign policies and thoughts as New China establishes. Through searching, the English version of this text has not been found, and this is the first translation. During the post-graduate study, I focus on this kind of translation research, especially on theory and practice. Based on the research results of predecessors, I finish the translation project through systemic study on theory and much translation practice.This thesis takes the text typology theory as the theoretical guidance. On the basis of Reiss and Newmark’s text typology theory, I realize that the political documents not only belong to informative texts, but also have expressive and appellative functions. So in translation, we have to correctly transmit information of original texts and show the original texts’ features. This thesis demonstrates the translation process, including preparation for translation, analysis of original text and translation checking, which provides reference of concrete operations for translation practice. On the basis of preceding studies, this thesis summary four features of political documents’ translation--accuracy, political nature, timeliness, and neutrality. I realize that the accuracy is vital for political documents’translation, and translators should make sure semantic and mood accuracy. At the same time, translators should possess a high sense of political responsibility and be politically minded, while advancing with the times and keeping a neutral position. This thesis combines practical cases and raises some translation skills in order to improve translation quality such as literal translation, free translation, and borrowing, conversion of word classes, omission, amplification, combining sentences, and voice shift.I hope that this translation practice will publicize our nation’s independent and peaceful-coexistence diplomatic concept and help shape good international image for China. I hope that I can make humble contributions for China’s development in the international society.