A Corpus-based Research On The Acceptability Of Idiom Translation In Xi Jinping:the Governance Of China

Since 2014,Xi Jinping: The Governance of China has received a warm reception at home and abroad.Its popularity opens a window for the international community to observe and understand contemporary China.As its English version was completed by an elite translation team organized by the government,the translation is thought to be representative and authoritative.Judging from the collected data,it can be found that although many researches on this book were conducted by international and domestic scholars,there were few studies about translation acceptability,especially that of idiom translation.Therefore,with idioms as the starting point,the thesis aims to analyze the translation acceptability from the perspective of readers and summarize the translation strategies used in idiom translation.Besides,the thesis is significant in theory and practice as it keeps on with Chinese culture“going global” strategy.With the help of the questionnaire,the thesis studies the acceptability of idiom translation in Xi Jinping: The Governance of China.The results of questionnaire show that80.06% of the respondents are able to understand the idioms chosen from the book,indicating that idiom translation is highly accepted by readers.Based on the result and with the aid of NVivo 11 and a self-built corpus,the thesis summarized the idiom translation strategies.From the overall data,it can be inferred that foreignization strategy tends to be used widely when translating idioms.More specifically,the case study shows that literal translation or transliteration with annotation works better for idioms exhibiting a large cultural vacancy.However,for idioms with a smaller cultural vacancy,free translation and idiomatic translation is given top priority.In a word,when translating idioms,translators tend to use foreignization,which is accepted by readers.However,the translation methods and techniques should be varied and flexible for the differences in culture,language and cognitive context,striving to provide target readers a translation with accuracy and fluency.