Translating Chinese Four-Character Structures In Diplomatic News:A Practice Report

This report is based on the author’s translation practice in the program of diplomatic news translation of the English website of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs introduced by Xi’an International Studies University.The author selected some English translations of the news in the column Top Stories on this website between November 2013 and March 2016 as language materials,chose typical four-character structures as the object of the research,and explored various specific and practical methods and techniques of translating the four-character structures,under the guidance of Skopos theory,and with the features of diplomatic news translation as reference and the foreign publicity as the total goal.In the course of the study,the author set up a corpus of the selected translations and adopted data analysis as the major research method so as to bring out a sound solution to the translation of four-character structures.After a series of exploration,the author found out that under the guidance of Skopos theory,translators may combine foreignization,domestication,literal translation,liberal translation,omission and comprehensive method in their practice.To be exact,they may take foreignization as the major strategy and domestication the supplement,adopt literal translation as the major translation method and liberal translation the supplement.Besides,they may make use of comprehensive method and also translation techniques such as omission to help realize the purposes of accurately conveying Chinese government’s positions and meanwhile publicizing the traditional Chinese culture as well.