A Corpus-based Critical Discourse Analysis Of The English Translation Of Premier Li Keqiang’s Speeches

Critical Discourse Analysis was developed in the late 1970 s and early 1980 s.It mainly focuses on non-literature field such as news reports,political addresses,and official documents.By analyzing the context and social history involved in the production,distribution and consumption of the discourse,it aims to reveal the hidden ideology behind the language from the perspectives of linguistics,sociology,psychology and communication.In view of this,this thesis adopts Fairclough’s three-dimensional model,combined with the relevant knowledge of corpus-based translation studies,to conduct a critical discourse analysis on the translation of Premier Li Keqiang’s speeches.This thesis selects ten of speeches delivered by Premier Li Keqiang on public political occasions and their corresponding translation as the corpora.The content of these speeches,which were influenced by the ideology of Chinese government and represented its political stance,serve political,economic,diplomatic and other purposes.With a comparative critical discourse analysis of the source texts and the target texts,this thesis aims to explore the influence of ideology on translation and illustrate how the will and the viewpoint are spread through the change of linguistic structures.The study finds that: Firstly,in terms of linguistic features,the distribution of modal verbs is higher compared with that in source texts and more high-value and middle-value modal verbs are applied in target texts;the number of personal pronoun “we” increases in the target texts and extra personal pronoun “we” are added in target texts;nominalization and passivization are used to make the translation more objective and more authoritative.Secondly,as for textual effect,the conversion of modal verbs from low-value to middle-value and high-value illustrates the proposition and determination of Chinese government and indicates the high sense of responsibility of China as a leading power in the world;besides,the added modal verbs help to demonstrate China’s firm stance clearly and make the semantic meaning understood thoroughly by foreigners.The high-frequency use of “we” shows China’s respect to other countries and shortens the psychological distance between the speaker and other politicians while creating a sense of responsibility and authority for China.The role of China in the related issues can be clearly clarified through the added personal pronoun “we”.As for nominalization and passivization,both increase the conciseness and authority of the translated texts.Compared with the source texts,the translation of Premier Li’s speeches serves a specific group of countries.The linguistic features manifested in target texts are supposed to be interpreted within its context.In order to expand the international spread of the translation and to create a better image of Chinese nation,the above changes in translation are influenced by the ideology contained in source texts and the stance in target texts may slightly different from that in source texts.This study provides an exploratory attempt for the application of critical discourse analysis in translation,which is a positive reference for similar research in the future.