论文总字数：25622字

摘 要

随着中国经济的发展，中外合作的不断加深，世界各国对了解中国及其政策的需求不断提高。每年的政府工作报告涉及了一系列当前经济、政治、社会、文化等发展现状以及对未来中国发展的展望，它是国外人士了解中国的有效途径，因此政府工作报告的翻译在中国对外宣传中起着极其重要的作用，也影响着中国的国际形象。本文根据目的论原则，通过研究2014年政府工作报告的英译版本，分析其文本的特点，并在此基础上总结其中的翻译原则和翻译方法，从而实现其翻译目的。

关键词：目的论；政府工作报告；翻译策略；翻译原则和方法

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 2

2.1 Political Texts 2

2.1.1 Definition 2

2.1.2 Classification 3

2.1.3 Features 3

2.2 Overview 3

2.3 Skopos Theory 4

2.3.1 Introduction 4

2.3.2 Rules 4

3. Analysis From the Perspective of Skopos Theory 6

3.1 Skopos Rule 6

3.2 Coherence Rule 8

3.3 Fidelity Rule 9

4.Translation Skills and Principles 10

4.1 Translation Skills 10

4.1.1 Amplification 10

4.1.2 Omission 10

4.2 Translation Principles 11

4.2.1 Source Orientation 11

4.2.2 Reader Orientation 11

5. Conclusion 11

Works Cited 13

1. Introduction

As our country’s development and reform and opening-up policy has been conducted, China has achieved a lot in many fields, including politics, economics, culture, national defense, etc. China has an increasing influence on the whole world. Consequently, we eagerly need an effective way to communicate with foreigners. Meanwhile, the translation of Government Work Report requires higher criterion because it is provided for foreigners to know about China. Concerning this, the guidance of translation theory can not be neglected for fear that translation errors appear. Therefore, this paper aims at studying Report on the Work of the Government in 2014 under the guidance of Skopos Theory and summing up translation strategies, principles and methods which are adopted in translation of 2014 Government Work Report so as to achieve translation objective.

The Report on the Work of the Government has attracted much attention from the whole world because of its importance to our country and its formal and authoritative quality. People from the whole world can know about China through this political document. On one hand, with the development of globalization, people around the world connect each other more and the communication between China and other countries has become more and more. On the other hand, whether China or other countries have developed rapidly, all countries hope to know other countries’ situations. The Report on the Work of the Government has summarized the previous working performance of China and made plans for our country’s future development. Thus, this annual political document provides an effective way for people at home and abroad to have an understanding of China’s situations at present and future plans of development. Beyond doubt, the requirements for the translation of Report on the Work of the Government are very high and rigorous and guaranteeing the accuracy of its translation is very significant and essential.

The translation of the Report on the Work of the Government has various angles to study it. This paper is focused on studying the translation of Report on the Work of the Government from the perspective of Skopos Theory. Therefore, the paper will focus on some questions as follows:

1. What are the characteristics of Report on the Work of the Government?
2. What are the contents of Skopos Theory?
3. How to understand Report on the Work of the Government under the guidance of Skopos Theory?
4. What strategies, principles and methods are adopted under the guidance of Skopos Theory?

The first and second questions will be discussed in part two, the third question will be discussed in part three and the last one is in part four.

The examples which appeared in this paper are all from Report on the Work of the Government in 2014 delivered by Premier Li Keqiang at the Second Session of the Twelfth National People’s Congress on March 5, 2014. According to the information, this paper is divided into five parts to discuss about this document’s translation as well as its strategies.

Part One introduces its background, purpose and importance of the research, research questions and layout of the paper.

Part Two introduces political texts. An overview of Report on the Work of the Government is also mentioned. It also involves the detailed introduction of Skopos Theory such as its skopos rule, coherence rule and fidelity rule.

Part Three analyzes the English version of Report on the Work of the Government based on Skopos Theory. And in detail, I will give some examples concerning its three rules which is mentioned in the previous part.

Part Four summarizes the principles of the rendition of Report on the Work of the Government and sums up some translation methods which are adopted to achieve translation purpose according to the above analysis.

Part Five is the conclusion of the above discussion and analysis.

2. Literature Review

2.1 Political Texts

2.1.1 Definition

Political texts as a unique stylistic form, compared with the general text translation, have its own characteristics. It needs to be treated in different ways. For elaborating a new policy direction, ideas, attitudes, achievement plans to most people, political texts are mostly carried out by authorities or leaders of the country.

2.1.2 Classification

Political texts cover a large range of texts in general. They can be classified into two categories：one is official reports，including declarations or statements addressed by government officials；the other is political documents，such as joint communiques，diplomatic agreements and other essays about politics，economics as well as diplomacy published on newspapers，periodicals and editorials．

2.1.3 Features

Political texts have their own characteristics. According to Newmark, all texts which contain the personal stamp belong to their authors (Newmark, 2001:39). From the perspective of their content, political texts are often covered with a lot of broad themes. They have a high level of generality, mixed with distinct Chinese characteristics and political terms. According to their structure, this type of texts includes sentence patterns. It contains complex long sentences, parallelism sentences and compound sentences. And we can divide political texts into two parts. One is to summarize the previous working performance including its merits and demerits. The other is to put forward plans for the future development．From the perspective of their logic, political texts try to be close to broad audience, written in simple forms, easy to read and remember.

2.2 Overview

On the morning of March 5, 2014, the Second Session of the Twelfth National People’s Congress opened at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Premier of the State Council : Li Keqiang delivered a government work report. Various political, economic, social, cultural situations at present and expectations for Chinese future in it. This is the government work report during Premier Li Keqiang’s term.

2.3 Skopos Theory

2.3.1 Introduction

Skopos Theory is a theoretical model of translation. Some schools view translating as a purposeful activity and has a systematic framework of theory to guide translating activity. It is put forward by German functionalist translation scientists Katharina Reiss, Hans Vermeer, Christiane Nord and so on from the purpose of theory of translational action.

An action leads to a result, a new situation or event and possibly to a new subject (Vermeer, 1989: 173). Verbal communication is one of activities with purpose and it conveys the speakers’ intentions. To determine the meaning of the words, it is necessary to give full consideration to the following factors: the speakers’ intentions, social situations, the hearers’ background knowledge, attitudes and so on. For translation, it is a ternary relationship: the original author---the translator---translation readers. The theory is that: The original can be used both in the literal approach and in the completely rewritten method, or the use of any translation strategies between the two as long as to achieve the purpose of the translation.

2.3.2 Rules

The setting of Skopos Theory can be traced to the sixties and seventies of the twentieth century. From the perspective of most people, translation has its aim, and the word “Skopos” came from Greek. We use Skopos Theory to translate concerning political texts as the technical term for the purpose of the translation (Vermeer,1989: 100).

This theory focuses on choosing a variety of purposes in the process of translation. Specifically, there are three rules in this theory, those are Skopos rule, Coherence rule and Fidelity rule. The core rule is Skopos rule. The following is about the introduction of these three rules.

2.3.2.1 Skopos Rule

Skopos Theory holds the view that the first principle that all the translation activities should follow is Skopos rule. That is “ the end justifies the means ” ( Nord, 2004: 29). It means that translation should be able to interpret human language and cultural contexts in the target language as the recipients expect. However, translation activities can have multiple purposes and these objectives are further divided into three categories: (1) the basic purpose of the translator (such as making a living); (2)the communicative purposes of the translation (such as enlightening readers); (3)the purpose by using a particular means of translation (such as adopting literal method to explain the grammatical structure’s of a language. The “purpose” refers to the communicative purpose of the translation special features. Skopos Theory refers that a translation process is decided by its purpose．In other words, “the end justifies the means” (Nord ). Skopos rule has a very important advantage. It is according to the target text’s purpose, translators can translate the same text into several different versions in different ways.

2.3.2.2 Coherence Rule

Coherence rule refers that the translation must abide by the language (intra-textual coherence) standard that the translation is acceptable. It is said that “ being coherent is synonymous with being part of the receiver’s situation ”(Nord, 2004: 32). It can make the recipients understand and has the meaning in the culture of human language and the communicative context of the translation. For the translator, the original text must be translated in a normal way so as to readers and the recipients can understand the target text.

2.3.2.3 Fidelity Rule

Fidelity rule refers that between the original text and the translation, there should exist a coherent interlanguage (inter-textual coherence). It is equivalent to faithful to the original called by other translation theories. But the degrees and forms which are faithful to the original text depend on the purpose and the translator’s understanding of the original text.

Nord thought out this theory. Skopos Theory has two flaws. First of all, various cultural backgrounds of people may have different thought about the good translation due to differences in cultural patterns. In addition, the communicative purpose of the translation required by Skopos rule is opposite to the intention of the original text’s author, then we will abide by Skopos rule and be contrary to Fidelity rule ( Nord, 2004: 38 ). Therefore, Nord thought out Fidelity rule to lessen differences in culture and the relationship between people who participate in translation action. On one hand, the translator has responsibility for the translation’s recipients and must explain the reasons for everything he has done. On the other hand, Fidelity rule demands that the translator should be loyal to the original text’s author. The translator should respect the original author and coordinate the translation of the target language and the intention of the author ( Nord, 2004: 40 ).

3. Analysis From the Perspective of Skopos Theory

3.1 Skopos Rule

Concerning Skopos Theory, translation will be viewed as a human action with specific purpose. Skopos Theory states that translation purpose should be placed in the center position in the process of translation. Skopos rule ranks the the highest in the three rules of Skopos Theory．Based on Skopos rule, proper translation principles and strategies can be adopted so as to achieve the intended translation purpose．Therefore，translation purpose is crucial for the translator．

Example 1 :

把加快转变职能，简政放权作为本届政府开门第一件大事。

Translation: We made accelerating the transformation of government functions, streamlining administration and delegating more power to lower-level governments the top priority of this government.

If we translate “简政放权” into “simply the administration and abandon the power”, western readers are apparently unable to understand Chinese political policies. And we must know the background and definition of this phrase according to Skopos Theory. “简政放权”means that our country needs to streamline the current Chinese government and give enterprises management rights. Therefore, four words are summarized in Chinese, but we translate it into a long phrase in English. It can make the implied content clear so as to achieve intercultural purpose.

Example 2 ：

让金融成为一池活水，更好地浇灌小微企业、“三农”等实体经济之树。

Translation: We will ensure that financial services play an active role in meeting the needs of the real economy, including small and micro businesses, agriculture, rural areas and farmers.

This is a typical example of the application of Skopos rule．Here the combination of word and number“三农”is a culture-loaded words which contains its specific implications under Chinese national situation．Nord believes that translation means comparison between cultures．Therefore，the translator should add the culture-related connotation in the translation of culture-loaded words．Given literally translated as ‘"three agricultures” it conveys the meaning that there are three kinds of agriculture in China, which is absolutely incorrect and will cause puzzles in understanding. The interpretation “agriculture, rural areas, and farmers” clears up the readers’ confusion about “三农” as well as gets a better comprehension about the exact meaning．Besides，such a rendition transmits the full implication of “三农” and fulfills the purpose of conveying the content at the cost of scarifying the original brief linguistic form．

Example 3 ：

扩大“营改增”试点，取消和免征行政事业性收费348项。

Translation：The pilot project to replace business tax with value-added tax was expanded, and 348 administrative fees were either canceled or exempted.

“营改增” is the abbreviation of “营业税改征增值税”. It is an economic policy that the State Council spread around the whole country. Many Chinese can understand this word, but if we do not explain its meaning to foreigners, they can not understand our country’s policies well.

Example 4 ：

成功应对光伏“双反”等重大贸易摩擦。

Translation: Major trade disputes over anti-dumping and countervailing duties on Chinese products, such as photovoltaic solar products, were successfully resolved.

Anti-dumping and countervailing duties are policies when exported abroad. “双反” means anti-dumping and countervailing. This word came from the investigation that the US made about our country’s export of PV industry. Thus, for foreigner who don’t know China well, we need to translate out the inner meaning of this word.

3.2 Coherence Rule

Coherence rule means that the rendition should make sense to target readers．According to coherence rule,the target readers’ requirements should be taken into consideration，including their cultural knowledge and idiomatic usage of target language．The task for the translator is to make sure that the translational version must conform to the target language rules．

Example 5：

保持宏观经济政策连续性稳定性，增强调控的前瞻性针对性。

Translation:Maintain continuity and stability of our macroeconomic policies, make macro-control more forward-oriented and targeted.

To make the rendition more coherent, the translator adopted two nouns and two adjectives according to the specific language situation. “性” belongs to the category word.

Example 6：

坚持走中国特色新型工业化、信息化、城镇化、农业现代化道路。

Translation: Keep to the new path of industrialization, IT application,urbanization and agricultural modernization with distinctive Chinese features.

“化”belongs to the category word. In order to make the target text is understandable for the target reader, the category word must be crossed out in the rendition．

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