摘 要

外宣工作对国家形象的塑造具有重大意义，是国家对外宣传成功与否的关键因素之一。作为外宣工作的重要组成部分，外宣翻译质量的高低对宣传效果有着重要影响。通过外宣翻译，中国的声音在全世界范围内得到传递，中国的观点也被越来越多的人接受，因此，外宣翻译在传播中国文化和价值方面发挥了重大作用。本文首先介绍了外宣翻译的定义、特点，将其与其他文本翻译进行区分,并指出了外宣翻译现存的问题；接着介绍了西方修辞学的演变历史；之后通过比较外宣翻译与修辞学在受众、建立认同和修辞语境三方面的共同之处，讨论在西方修辞学视角下研究外宣翻译的可能性；最后在现代修辞学视角下探讨提高外宣翻译质量的技巧，主要包括：建议认同、重视受众的中心位置以及注重修辞环境。

关键词：现代修辞学；外宣翻译；翻译技巧

Abstract

International publicity has a significant impact on building the national image and it is one of the key factors that influence the effect of publicity. As an important component in the external publicity work, the quality of international publicity translation has an important influence on the effect of external publicity work. Because of international publicity translation, China’s voice has been heard all over the world and its propositions have been accepted by more and more people. International publicity translation plays a vital part in transmitting China’s culture and value. This paper firstly introduces the term international publicity translation, including its definition and existing problems. Next it talks about features of international publicity translation and evolution of rhetoric. Then the paper finds connections between international publicity translation and modern rhetoric theory. Finally the paper discusses techniques to improve the quality of international publicity translation from the prospective of modern rhetoric, which includes establishing identification, paying attention to audiences’ central position and being aware of rhetoric situation.

Key Words: modern rhetoric; international publicity translation; translation techniques

Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 International Publicity Translation and Modern Rhetoric 3

2.1 Features of International Publicity Translation 3

2.2 Evolution of Modern Rhetoric 4

3 Connection between Modern Rhetoric and International Publicity Translation 6

3.1 Audience: The Common Core 6

3.2 Persuasion and Identification: The Common Goal 7

3.3 Rhetoric Situation: The Common Operating Environment 7

4 Strategies to Improve International Publicity Translation 9

4.1 Establishment of Identification 9

4.2 Attention to Audiences’ Central Position 10

4.3 Awareness of Rhetoric Situation 12

5 Conclusion 14

References 15

Acknowledgements 16

Study on the International Publicity Translation from the Prospective of Modern Rhetoric

1 Introduction

Foreign publicity translation is an indispensable process in foreign publicity. It is an important component of a nation’s external communication and cooperation and is often seen as a nation’s voice. Due to its uniqueness, it is vital to know the distinct features of international publicity translation and realize problems existing in the current process of translation.

Li Xin is one of the earliest scholars who uses the term “international publicity translation”. She talks about the special audience and particular purpose of international publicity translation, and mentions its differences from other types of translation in accordance with translation principles and methods, thus widening its further development. Huang Youyi (2004) gives definition for international publicity from two aspects. In his view, international publicity translation refers to these activities that translate information of China from Chinese into foreign languages and then transmit it all over the world to build a better national image, with use of all kinds of media such as books, newspapers, televisions, radios and the Internet. For Zhang Jian (2013), international publicity translation is a special form of translation and a communication activity aimed to make China understood by the world, which uses Chinese as its information source and foreign languages such as English as its information carriers. Its communication channels are media and targets are those foreigners.

Since international publicity translation is so widely needed, many experts pay highly attention to the quality of it and do lots of researches about the strategy problems of international publicity translation from different perspectives, hoping to improve the translation quality and acquire ideal results on building national image. How to avoid misinterpretation becomes a challenge faced by Chinese publicity translation authorities. Viewing from the skopos of functionalist approaches to translation and based on the 2014 report on government work, Zhai Yunchao and Wang Xianzhi (2015) proposes some Chinese to English publicity translation strategies in order to deliver better methods of translating.. Besides, there is an innovation study on translation from the perspective of theory on rhetorical persuasion which establishes the moral intellect and good personality and improves the quality of translation by resorting to the personality theory (Lv amp; Yu, 2017). For the international publicity translation on Chinese current affairs buzzwords, Song Pingfeng puts forward three translation strategies on it from the perspective of western rhetoric (Song, 2017). Kang Junjie also studies the international publicity translation strategies from the perspective of rhetorical persuasion and proposes three translation strategies (Kang, 2016). National image and translation strategies for China’s global communication discuss the relationship between national image and international publicity translation (Lu, 2016). As we can see, domestic scholars’ studies flourish on it.

The study of international publicity translation has gained rapid development in the last twenty years. However, there are lots of problems existing in the current situation. First of all, compared with the study of literary translation, the history of international publicity translation study is relatively short and its research system is not complete. Most studies are still in the stage of experiential summary and lack systematic and in-depth theoretical basis. The works about its systematic research are still rare in China. Therefore, China’s international publicity translation study, whether in the macro level or the micro level, all require effective translation strategies and breakthrough research to improve the quality of foreign publicity. Then, many translators have overlooked cultural differences and many translation texts have been written in the wrong words, thus making it difficult to maintain the original meaning (Huang, 2004). If more serious, it will cause unnecessary misunderstandings and lead to negative images of our country. Because of its particular aims and its distinct features, international publicity translators need not only to be proficient in language, but also have profound economic, political and cultural background.

Based on all the information or standpoints reflected in these previous studies summarized above, and taking the features of international publicity translation and modern rhetoric into consideration, it is possible to improve the translation quality of international publicity translation from the perspective of modern rhetoric.

2 International Publicity Translation and Modern Rhetoric

2.1 Features of International Publicity Translation

As is shown above, definition of international publicity translation has been extending with the development of China’s national strength. Generally speaking, there are two senses of international publicity, the broad sense and the narrow sense (Xu, 2017). For the broad sense, the audiences of international publicity refer to those who are not in the information source area. As for the narrow senses, international publicity particularly refers to the foreign publicity activities that disseminate true information of China and make our view accepted. Its main audiences are foreigners. Judging from these, there are also two senses of its translation. The broad one of international publicity translation refers to almost all kinds of practical translation except literary translation, including all walks of life who participate in the international publicity translation activities. The narrow one specifically means the translation of those texts which are generally used in media reports, government announcements, a nation’s publicity documents and so on.