Study On Government Publicity Materials Translation Based On Adaptation Theory

In recent years,the globalization provides China with great opportunity to improve the comprehensive strength and China has successfully hosted a number of international activities.After the strategy of “Going Global” has been put forward,China’s international status keeps increasing,which deepens cooperation and communication between China and foreign countries significantly.In this context,the government publicity materials translation research is of inestimable value.The present study on government publicity materials translation falls into three categories: a simple study of translation strategies;studies on the translation from the perspective of a theory;and the literature review.The research in this field is not a fruitful one,so that the total amount of articles is relatively small and the research material are mainly from news report or tourism introduction.The research into materials related to the government publicization is still insufficient.Therefore,this thesis intends to adopt qualitative analysis to study government publicity material translation from the perspective of Adaptation Theory and put forward practical translation strategies,providing reference for the C-E translation practice.Verschueren thinks that Adaptation Theory explains the use of language from the perspective of cognition,society and culture.He believes that the process of language use is the process of making continuous choices to adapt to communicative context under different consciousnesses.In the translation of government publicity materials,Adaptation Theory emphasizes the dynamic nature of the context of source language and target language,as well as the dynamic and restrictive nature of translators.Firstly,this thesis analyzes the linguistic features of source text and target text from the perspective of Adaptation Theory.This kind of language is a communication tool targeted at politics,culture and market,so its translation must be adapted to the target reader’s psychological world from multiple angles,such as words,sentences,texts and rhetoric,adapted to the characteristics of information transmission and as well as different regional cultures.Based on the above analysis,the translation make the optimal choices to realize the adaptation.Secondly,from the perspective of Adaptation Theory,this thesis,taking Jingzhou government’s investment promotion material translation as examples,making a comparative analysis of the original and translated texts,distinguishing the reasonable ones and those failing to realize the adaptation.It is found there are some problems in the translated text,such as information redundancy,excessive literal translation,structural confusion and so on,which lead to the failure in achieving the desired effect of publicizing.All of these are caused by failure to make reasonable adaptation.Based on the functions of language,Peter Newmark classifies texts into three in his Approach to Translation: expressive text,informative text and evocative text.Publicity materials mainly serve informative function and imperative function.It is characteristic of communication and dissemination.In view of the features of publicity materials,under the framework of Adaptation Theory,this thesis explores the translated texts from a new perspective,and puts forward four strategies to guide government publicity materials translation: the deleting strategy,the weakening strategy,the corresponding strategy and the highlighting strategy.That is to say,different strategies are adopted so as to adapt to the psychological characteristics of readers,the characteristics of information transmission and the characteristics of regional culture.If the content is redundant,the translator will directly delete;if it is a secondary content,the translator will weaken it;and if it is the general content,the translator will translate without special treatment;if the content is important,the translator will focus on it leave reader a deep impression.In addition,the translator following Adaptation Theory set the high requirement to translators.They are supposed to be bilingual proficient,have a good mastery of translation knowledge,both knowledge of the world and process knowledge,which is also the implication of this thesis.To sum up,this research intends to propose the effective translation strategies to guide the translation of government publicity materials from the perspective of Adaptation Theory,hoping to contribute a little bit to the government publicity materials translation,subsequently to the “Going Global” policy.Admittedly,the research has attracted growing attention,however,the actual translation theory and practice,still as yet under-explored,is an area which calls for more research.