论文总字数：30578字

摘 要

随着世界格局多极化的发展，以及我国对外开放的进一步深化，各国之间政治交流日益加深。因此，将中国特色政治词汇作适当的翻译，让世界各国的人们更好地了解中国显得尤为重要。本论文结合奈达功能对等理论研究中国特色政治词汇的翻译。文章在分析奈达功能对等理论的起源以及历史上中外学者对其所做的研究的基础上，阐述了中国特色政治词汇的定义和特点；然后运用奈达功能对等理论，结合大量中国特色词汇翻译的实例，探讨了为实现功能对等，在中国特色政治词汇的翻译过程中一般采用的翻译方法。

关键词：中国政治词汇；功能对等；翻译方法

Contents

1. Introduction....................................................................................................1
2. Literature Review..........................................................................................2

2.1 Equivalence Studies at Home.........................................................................2

2.3 Equivalence Studies Abroad...........................................................................3

3. Characteristics of Chinese Political terms...................................................5

4. Translation of Chinese Political Terms.........................................................6

4.1 Literal translation............................................................................................6

4.2 Free Translation..............................................................................................8

4.3 Transliteration ..............................................................................................9

5. Conclusion.....................................................................................................10

Works Cited.......................................................................................................12

1. Introduction

As the society develops, every language still keeps changing, including Chinese. China is a great country with a long history over 5000 years. She has her own unique national conditions. In recent years, she has witnessed various movements and changes, which bring about many new terms in languages, especially in the field of politics. It"s the Chinese political terms that are demonstrating China"s political and economical development. China is using the most effective means to tell the foreigners her current policies. Therefore, how to translate Chinese political new terms has become one tough task that translators have to face. It is a necessity to make a comprehensive study and analysis on the translation of Chinese political terms so that the translators can find a suitable translating method. Translation is a cultural activity of vital importance in the globe. Since the reform and opening-up in 1978, China has taken on a new look. A series of new policies have been made to promote its development. Thus, in the wake of those policies, many new political terms with Chinese characteristics have appeared.

In recent years, more and more international exchanges have happened including those in science, politics, trade, management and culture. For one thing, many developed countries are eager to know China in a comprehensive way, which have told us that it becomes an urgent task to make a theoretical research of the political terms so that it will be conductive to informing the foreign countries of Chinese policy through appropriate means such as translation and other activities. For another, China needs to accomplish her development in this competitive international environment so it is a necessity to express her attitudes toward some issues through proper translation of political terms. In general, the translation of Chinese political terms plays a very important role in trying to make the world to understand China better and in providing an opportunity to strengthen its status in the globe.

However, the research on the translation of Chinese political terms is still inadequate. In this paper, the author makes a comprehensive study of the translation of Chinese political terms. This paper is made up of five parts including the introduction and conclusion.

The first part introduces the background, significance and aim of the research. Part two gives a literature review of the functional equivalence theory by introducing the former translators’ studies about functional equivalence both home and abroad. In the part three, the definition and characteristics of Chinese political terms are talked about. In the part four, some methods of translation are discussed and analyzed one after another including literal translation, free translation and transliteration. Furthermore, this paper selects many examples to clarify how to achieve the equivalence in the process of translating Chinese political terms. This is the main part of the paper. Part five gives a conclusion of this paper including some limitations and suggestions for future studies.

2. Literature Review

In translation history, Functional Equivalence is a variant of the comparable effect. Tylter, British translation theorists, was the first person who proposed the comparable effect theory. In 1790, in his book "On the Principles of Translation", he gave the "good translation" a definition: "A good translation is to completely convert the advantages of the original text to another language, enable those people in target language countries can clearly comprehend, strong feelings, just as people using the original language comprehension." This means that a good translation should enable people to have the same response in different language societies as that in the original one. A number of books and articles have described the concept of functional adequacy in translating as “dynamic equivalence”. The book called The Theory and Practice of Translation (1969) has set forth and discussed it in Toward a Science of Translating (1964) at length. Functional Equivalence is the same that of dynamic equivalence.

2.1 Equivalence studies at home

At the end of the 19th century, Yan Fu, proposed the three principle of translation—faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance. He has contributed a lot to the development of translation of China. Afterwards, there is a great number of translators and translation theorist such as Lu Xun, Qu Qiubai and Ji Xianlin, etc. Here I will talk about other contemporary two scholars’ studies on the equivalence theory. They put forward a lot of translation theories similar to equivalence theory in the western countries. They are Tan Zaixi and Ma Huijuan. Tan Zaixi elaborately introduces the Nida’s translation theories, such as the development, the three phrases, main contents and its contributions. He makes us have a general knowledge of the theory and makes a elaborate analysis of the merits of Nida’s functional equivalence theory. He points out that in Nida’s view, the people who assume the tasks of judging are not ordinary people, but those people such as translators,scholars,critics and linguists(Tan Zaixi,2000:22). His book New Edition of Nida on Translation has grown greatly popular among readers during the past two decades. It can be regarded as a great book which gives a comprehensive review of Nida’s translation theories.

Ma Huijuan reasonably analyzes Nida’s functional equivalence theory. She gives a detailed explanation of the theory in the way of the feasibilities and limitations of Nida’s theory. She points out that because Nida emphasizes the equivalent effect first in the light of meaning and secondly in the light of style, it is possible to reach rough equivalence to some extent. She gives lots of examples to compare between the versions translated according to Nida’s functional equivalence and other theorists. Through the analysis, she finds that Nida’s theory has more flexibilities in carrying practical translation activities. But she also proposed that Nida’s theory is not perfect, there are still some limitations to the theory. Nida gives high priority to the response of the reader and thus neglects the aesthetic value of the original text especially the literature. Therefore, she thinks Nida’s functional equivalence plays a vital role in translating such texts as advertisement, political text, technical text and so on. However, it is not suitable to take functional equivalence as the only standard in the process of translating serious literature with high aesthetic value. She also writes a book named A Study on Nida’s Translation Theory (Ma Huijuan, 1993:3) which systematically researches the Nida’s translation theory, elaborates some misunderstandings concerning his theory, discloses its nature an makes an exploration of its validity and limitations in literary translation, pointing out that his theory fails to address the issue of rendering aesthetic values of literary work into another language.

2.2 Equivalence studies abroad

In J.R.Firth’s writing, the term “equivalence” in translation appeared for the first time. He makes a comment that the real translation doesn’t exist. Briefly, J.R.Firth, Nida, Catford, Baker, Newmark and Wilss, all of these theorists have devoted themselves to elaborating the notion of equivalence, which has promoted the development of this area of research. Alexander Fraser Tytler is famous for “equivalent effect”. His book Essay on the Principles of Translation has give a good translation such a definition: It is defined as that “in which the merit of the original work is so completely transfused into another language to be as distinctly apprehended, and as strongly felt, by a native of the country to which that language belongs as it is by these who speak the language of the original work” (Tytler: 2007:98). In other words, a good translation can make the target text readers get the same equivalent effects as the source text readers. It is believed that in order to communicate more effectively, one must respect the characteristics of receptor language, exploit the greatest possible potentialities of the target language and reduce some of the cultural implications for the good of target audience. From above we can see that in the Tytler’s definition, he points out the equivalent effect between the receptors of the source language and target language is quite important. Eugene A Nida is a well-known American linguist and he is great man who must be mentioned when we do some studies on “equivalence”. Today, his work and theory have influenced many translators. In Nida’s “functional equivalence”, he elaborates the process of translation and develops a methodology of translation studies on the basis of linguistics. He thinks that translators should take reader’s response into consideration. However, he believes that a number of fundamental problems still appear in studying translation adequacy in terms of “reader’s response” (Nida,1993:315). He thinks there are several factors in that affect the adequacy of translation. The first is the reliability of the text, the second is the discourse type and the third is the intended audience. And the fourth factor is the manner. The last is the purpose that the translation has been made for. All of those factors are applicable to two aspects: the translated text and the original text. He also gives such an explanation of functional equivalence: “The readers of a translated text should be able to comprehend it to the point that they can conceive of how the original readers of the text must have understood and appreciate it” (Nida, 1993:316). Any kind of translation without reaching this degree is considered unacceptable.

No matter the scholars in China or in the west, all of them have made great contributions to the development of equivalence theory. They have promoted the development of the translation.

3. Characteristics of Chinese Political Terms

A lot of scholars in the translation field have various opinions towards the definition of Chinese political terms. However, they have reached certain agreement about it. They think that Chinese political terms are playing a great part in carrying Chinese political information. Those terms have seen the numerous changes in the aspects of China’s politics, economy and society. Different people have different opinions about the definition of Chinese political terms. Some scholars think that Chinese political terms mean those that are based on Chinese culture and originated from special Chinese social and cultural environment. Some others hols that Chines political terms are the special ways of expression of Chinese including some concepts, political terms, phrases and some words with outstanding Chinese national characteristics. In general, we can get the definition like this: Chinese political terms mean the unique and special words, phrases and expressions characterized by Chinese features, which are originated from the CPC and government’s political activities and usually used in China’s domestic and foreign policies.

Unlike other kinds of words, current political words have their special characteristics. From the aspect of time, current political words are new words; they are put forward by the government according to the specific requirements of the development of times. The current political words have special historical stages. For example, in the beginning of reform and opening up, there were words like “to distribute according to ones work（按劳分配）”, then after Chinese successful achievement of manned space flight, the new word “taikonaut” emerges as the times require.

The powerful policy is another important characteristic and the appearance of current political words reflects the state policies in one period, such as “(scientific outlook on development)科学发展观” “(the four fundamental principles)四项基本原则”, “(late marriage and late childbirth)晚婚晚育”, “ (anti-pornography drive)扫黄” . Furthermore, the Chinese political terms reflect the achievement that China has created in the process of reform and opening up to the outside world.

4. Translation of Chinese Political Terms

As a translator, he or she must pay attention to the two languages and especially the two kinds of culture involved. Due to the differences in culture there may be some concepts in source language that don’t have their equivalent words in the target language. This may result from the various factors including the differences in geography, customs and habits, beliefs, worldview. In the past, one of the most commonly used methods for translating Chinese political terms is literal translation. Nowadays, many translators tend to adopt flexible and new techniques in the process of translating those terms such as literal translation, free translation, transliteration, plus explanations and equivalent words. These methods will be discussed and analyzed one after another.

Following are some methods to translate current political vocabulary, for example, literal translation, free translation and etc.

4.1 Literal translation

When the translator uses literal translation, one does his or her best to keep the content and style of the original text so that make the translated language closer to the original language. It retains the idea, style and rhetoric of the original language. Translators should always remember that literal translation is not word-for-word translation which is unqualified. Not all sentences can be translated in a literal way. Sometimes, translators should make some changes in translation in order that they can make the translation more influent without anything awkward. Some sentences, if translated literally would not conform to the culture of target language. In the book written by Nida and Charles R. Taber, the “dynamic equivalence” was changed into “functional equivalence” by Nida. Though Chinese and English is different, we can still find some similar words which can express the same meaning, we should choose the appropriate words to translate those can be translated directly according to the English or the Chinese mode. This is often seen as an effective way to bring the Chinese culture to other countries.

Not any kind of phrases or texts can be translated with literal translation. There are some requirements when we use this method. Firstly, the original expressions must have unique culture features of the original text. Some classic examples of literal translation are as follows:

“service-oriented government” is a translation of “服务型政府”

“The people of Hong Kong administrate Hong Kong” is a translation of “港人治港”

“服务型政府”is a government that specially services people. Building a service-oriented government is of necessity of achieving scientific development and building a socialist society characterized by harmony. This kind of government is implementing management in service and reflecting service in management. We can call this translation strategy literal translation, which is easy to understand and at the same time remains the original flavor. Similarly, “法治政府” can be translated as “law-based government”. For the English translation, the translation strategies and the word-formation ways are not isolated. They can learn from each other. During the process of translating this kind of words and sentences, we should give special attention to the strategy. Only learning by heart and soul, can students get a good result.

From the English translation of “the people of Hong Kong administrate Hong Kong” we can come across general meaning of the Chinese expression “港人治港”. That is, the people of Hong Kong have the right to select their own leader to lead them and govern them on the basis of their own thoughts. They own high degree of autonomy. Hong Kong Special Administrative Regions enjoy administrative and legislative powers, an independent judiciary and the right of adjudication on the land. However, the high degree of autonomy cannot exercise the right of diplomacy and cannot charge the defense affairs and it should be led by the People’s Republic of China.

Due to that politics is a very important and sensitive topic, most of the political expressions are relatively settled down. The translation is usually discussed by translators of Central Complication and Translation Bureau for many times. Those translators will consider all the factors. On one hand, the correct and positive China image must be conveyed to the globe. Usually the nation’s image can be changed by a small word, thus the translators have to think about every detail even the smallest one. On the other hand, translators should fully translate the implied meaning in the political expressions and make them conform to the Chinese characteristics either by the translation strategy of literal translation or free translation.

Paper tiger, which is very familiar to every Chinese, is originated from Chairman Mao Zedong’s translation. In English dictionary, ‘scarecrow’ is a word similar to ‘纸老虎’, but it is not so vivid as paper tiger. It is obvious that Mr.Mao created the paper tiger with his own understanding. It is the type of Chinese ways of thinking. In English,　paper means “纸” and tiger means “老虎”. So tiger can express the meaning that Mr.Mao wants to put forward. In his view, it will be easy to break if the tiger is made of paper. In this way, the word ‘paper tiger’ can make the English readers easily get across the meaning. Thus paper tiger is used more commonly in English than scarecrow.

From the examples above, we can see that the literal translation has two merits. The first is the mode of thinking, which is analyzed from the perspective of cross cultural exchanges. It is an indiscrete part of culture. When carrying on translation activities, the translators try to use the literal translation in order to keep the vividness of the original text. The second is that literal translation can bring a lot of new words to the target language, which is analyzed from the perspective of the development of culture. Following are the examples: “(criticism and self-criticism)批评与自我批评”, “(eight-point rules)八项规定”, “(a list of government powers)政府权力清单”.

4.2 Free translation

Free translation is a method obviously separate from literal translation. It is usually adopted when there are huge differences between the original language and the translated language. For some political words, there are no direct correspondents in English. In this case, free translation can be used. Here are some examples.

“计划生育” is translated as “family planning”, which is an example of free translation. When the People’s Republic of China was foundation, the population growth was in a condition of no planning and fertility rate continued to increase greatly. The contradiction began to appear, which is between the promising development of national economy with plans and the growth of the population with no planning. In that case, China proposed a policy to encourage late marriage and late childbirth, fewer and better birth. The aim of the practice is to control the number of China’s population so as to improve the quality of the population. If readers have a good understanding of the background of the policy, they can easily know why translators express it in this way, which is good to the transmission of China’s traditional culture to the outside world.

“反腐倡廉” is translated as “fighting corruption and encouraging integrity”

“形象工程和政绩工程” is translated as “image and vanity projects”, which is deeply marked with Chinese characteristics .

The English translation of “反腐倡廉” is relatively settled down. Usually when people see the Chinese expressions, they will think of the corresponding English translation. However, the English translation “形象工程和政绩工程” has been changed for several times and then is relatively fixed. It is firstly translated as “to build ostentatious projects in order to make a good impression or show their achievements”, which is free translation to leave people a general impression of its meaning. Then it is changed as “image and vanity projects”. This translated version remains until today and sustains a strong Chinese flavor. People still have controversies about this English translation. Some people think the first one is better while others think the latter better. Both sides have their own opinions, but the latter one tends to have been accepted by target readers and during a very long period, it will not be changed again.

4.3 Transliteration

“Transliteration spells words in corresponding characters of another alphabet. When there is a gap or in adequacy in the vocabulary, it may sometimes be better transliterated in pinyin than normally expressed.”(Liu Jia, 2008) Transliteration is also used a lot in the process of translating political words with Chinese characteristics.

“guanxi” : 关系

While used on political occasions, this word has unique meanings which can only be found in China. “guanxi” describes the basic dynamic in the complex nature of personalized networks of influence and social relationships. It is a central concept in Chinese society. In Western media, the pinyin is becoming more widely used while translating Chinese word instead of the two common words--- “connections ” and “relationships” ---as neither of those terms sufficiently reflect the wide cultural implications that “guanxi” describes.

“Shuanggui” : 双规

This word is commonly used and acknowledged among law community and political field. Therefore, it is not necessary to make a free translation. Beyond the literal meaning, actually “Shuanggui” is a secret detention mechanism without any judicial supervision and regulations by law. According to the 《The Economist》, “Shuanggui” is another law specially laid down by Communist Party of China for the CPC members who have made serious mistakes.

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