A Corpus-based Study On Reproduction And Reconstruction Of Modality In English Translation Of Diplomatic Discourse

Since the 18th CPC National Congress,Chinese government has remarkably implemented the idea of building major country diplomacy with Chinese characteristics.However,China is confronted with many problems and challenges in the process of integrating into the world and spreading China’s diplomatic discourse,among which how to translate is one of the top concerns.China’s Foreign Affairs is a kind of representative diplomatic discourse and official publication,which summarizes the annual international situation,systematically interprets China’s foreign policy and gives a detailed introduction to China’s foreign relations.The translation of China’s Foreign Affairs is of great significance and research value.As a significant way to realize interpersonal function of discourse,modality can show the speaker’s position and attitude in diplomatic discourse.In China’s Foreign Affairs,what’s the feature of modality in Chinese source text? How does the English translated text reproduce and reconstruct modality in the source text? What are the factors that may account for it? To address these questions,based on the use of the bilingual parallel corpus of Chinese and English versions of China’s Foreign Affairs(2011-2020),this study investigates the reproduction and reconstruction of modality in English translations of China’s Foreign Affairs from three aspects: modality type,orientation,and modality value drawing upon the theory of Modality System proposed by Halliday.Corpus-based quantitative and qualitative analysis of modality reveal the following findings: 1)modality in Chinese source text has the following features: for modality type,it uses much more modulation than modalization;for modality orientation,it tends to express its stands and opinions in a subjective and implicit way;for modality value,it is featured by the high-frequent use of modal expressions with median value.2)The reproduction and reconstruction of modality in the English translated text demonstrates distinctive features.Most modal expressions are translated faithfully in three dimensions of modality.However,there are still some changes of modality presenting features of “de-obligation” in modality type,“objectivization” in modality orientation and “being median” in modality value,thus leading to the reconstruction of modality in English translation.Besides,a small part of modal expressions in Chinese source text is omitted in the English translated text.3)Language differences between Chinese and English and institutional constraints are two major factors that may account for the reproduction and reconstruction of modality in English translations of China’s Foreign Affairs.