用操纵理论探析政治文本翻译之文本外因素_以2010年政府工作报告为例.pdf

南京财经大学硕士学位论文用操纵理论探析政治文本翻译之文本外因素:以2010年政府工作报告为例姓名：丁晓超申请学位级别：硕士专业：英语语言文学指导教师：肖辉2011-01-07南京财经大学硕士学位论文 3 摘摘 要要 传统的翻译学把翻译仅仅看作是文字间的纯语言转换。 20 世纪 70 年代以来，翻译研究出现了“文化转向” ，继而是“权力转向” ，研究者们自此跳出了纯语言学研究的藩篱，将目光转向文本之外的层面，试图探究和揭示影响翻译的幕后因素。在这一过程中，作为操纵学派代表人物之一的勒菲弗尔提出了“操纵”这一概念，并指出语言只是影响翻译的一个元素，而整个翻译过程将受到更多语言之外的多元因素的操控。这一理论的提出为翻译研究提供了一个崭新的视角。 政治文本作为一种独立的文体，体现一国的大政方针，关系到国家主权，领土完整以及国与国之间的关系，甚至世界发展趋势，因此其译本质量的好坏直接关系到一国政府对外宣传的成功与否。 在中国,政治文本翻译一向由中央编译局，新华社等专业外宣部门负责， 这在很大程度上为译本的日后研究确保了质量及权威性。 鉴于此，本文以操纵理论为框架，采用描述解释的研究方法并选取 2010 年政府工作报告及其英译本进行试探性的对比分析，旨在揭示意识形态这只“无形之手”和赞助人这只“有形之手”以及诗学等文本外因素在政治文本翻译过程中如何发挥作用。本文最终目的是要通过分析这些语料，将勒菲弗尔的三要素操纵理论运用到汉语这一环境中去考量，以检验其效度和适用度。 本文分为六个章节。第一章：介绍本文的研究背景、研究意义、研究方法、论文框架。第二章：文献综述。介绍政治文本翻译的研究现状并对目前为止国内外对操纵理论的研究进行了梳理、总结。第三章：首先介绍操纵理论提出的文化背景“权力转向” ，然后主要论述本文的理论框架：勒菲弗尔的“操纵”理论，并分析意识形态、赞助人和诗学三个操控要素及其对翻译的影响。第四章：对政治文本翻译的特点、种类及研究路径进行简要论述。第五章：个案研究。重点剖析“三要素”是如何影响政治文本翻译过程，尤其以 2010 年政府工作报告为例。初步研究表明,由于政治文本地位的特殊性，其翻译离不开主流社会意识形态和诗学观的操纵；同时，赞助人在文本选材和审核，公布阶段也发挥了重大决策作用。第六章：结语部分。总结此项研究的意义,局限及对未来研究的建议。 关键词：操纵理论；政治文本翻译；意识形态；赞助人；诗学 南京财经大学硕士学位论文 1 abstract translation has been traditionally regarded as a matter of linguistic transfer. since 1970s, in the circle of translation studies, there appeared the “cultural turn” and then the “power turn”, which have broken the barrier of purely linguistic research and converted the researchers attention to extra-linguistic factors. during this period, andre lefevere, one of the representatives of the manipulation school, put forth the concept of “manipulation” and argued that language is just one aspect influencing the translation process, while the whole process would be manipulated much more by diverse extra-linguistic factors. the proposition of this manipulation theory has paved a new path for translation studies. as an independent text type, political texts manifest one nations policies and guidelines, which bear a direct concern with the countrys sovereignty, territorial integrity, the relationships between different countries and even the development trend of international situation. so the quality of these political translations will directly affect the result of one countrys publicity. in china, the translation tasks are generally undertaken by such professional translation departments as central compilation and translation bureau, xinhua agency, etc., which, to a large extent, guarantees their quality and authority for further studies. so, this thesis intends to put the study of political translation into a larger and broader context. based on the manipulation theory, and a descriptive and explanatory research method, it makes a tentative comparison and analysis between gwr 2010 and its english version with the aim of revealing the role played by the “invisible hand”ideology, the “visible hand”patronage, as well as poetics in the translation process of chinese political texts. the ultimate goal of the present research is to apply lefeveres triad theory of manipulation to the chinese environment to examine its validity and applicability. this thesis consists of six chapters. chapter one is an introduction covering the research background, research significance, research methodology as well as the 南京财经大学硕士学位论文 2 layout of the whole thesis. chapter two is a literature review，reviewing the current research situation of translation of political texts and also carrying out a retrospect of the studies on manipulation theory at home and abroad. chapter three, firstly, explicates the power turn, under which lefevere proposed his manipulation theory, and then lays bare the theoretical framework of this thesismanipulation theory and the three manipulative factors, namely, ideology, patronage and poetics. chapter four briefly discusses the characteristics, classification and different research approaches to political texts translation. chapter five is a case study, which is also the highlight of the thesis, focusing on the analysis of how the triad factors affect the translation process of political texts with gwr 2010 as its corpus. after preliminary researches, it is found that due to the special status of political texts, their translation cannot escape the control of the social mainstream ideology and poetics; meanwhile, patronage also plays a vital role in the stages of selection, censoring and public releasing. chapter six is the conclusion, in which the author presents the major findings, limitations and some suggestions for further studies. key words: manipulation theory; translation of political texts; ideology; patronage; poetics 学位论文独创性声明学位论文独创性声明 本论文是我个人在导师指导下进行的研究工作及取得的研究成果。 论文中除了特别加以标注和致谢的地方外， 不包含其他人或其它机构已经发表或撰写过的研究成果。 其他同志对本研究的启发和所做的贡献均已在论文中作了明确的声明并表示了谢意。 作者签名： 日期： 学位论文使用授权声明学位论文使用授权声明 本人完全了解南京财经大学有关保留、使用学位论文的规定，即：学校有权保留送交论文的复印件，允许论文被查阅和借阅；学校可以公布论文的全部或部分内容，可以采用影印、缩印或其它复制手段保存论文。保密的论文在解密后遵守此规定。 作者签名： 导师签名： 日期： 南京财经大学硕士学位论文 6 chapter one introduction 1.1 background of the study with the improvement of her comprehensive national strength and international status, china is now increasingly active and remarkable on the international arena. accordingly, people all over the world are much more eager to learn about china than ever before, including her political policies, economic situation and future plans. meanwhile, china is willing to demonstrate herself to the outside world so as to be better understood in all aspects. the annual “government work report” (hereinafter referred to as gwr), delivered to the peoples congress, reviewing the performance of the chinese government during last year or the past five years and outlining the plans for the future development in the areas of politics, economy, education, culture and etc., certainly presents the most authoritative and important source of information about the current china. as a special window to the outside world, gwr is really an effective medium of informing people both at home and abroad of chinese present policies and current situation in all respects. therefore, the translation of gwr serves as a crucial bridge linking china and other countries, especially the ones with different political systems. many diplomatic experts and experienced translators have made great contributions to this field; yet, there is still a long way to go to reach perfection. starting from andre lefeveres manipulation theory, this thesis intends to make a preliminary study of the translation activity of the report in the current chinese international communication, aiming to find out influences caused by the underlying extratextual factors on the whole translation process. due to the fact that the manipulation theory has been rarely applied in the study of the translation of gwr, it provides a new angle for studies in this field. 1.2 the necessity of the research the manipulation theory cares more about the concrete factors behind the 南京财经大学硕士学位论文 7 surface, which affects the production, acceptance and appreciation of the translated versions. based on this, the present thesis will enrich the research on translation process. first of all, the extratextual perspective of the manipulation theory leads us to apply a new research paradigm to probe into the nature of translation. it is discovered that translation is far from being a neutral activity independent of politics, ideology and interest conflicts, nor is it pure linguistic work, or transfer and substitution of discourse signs between texts. rather, it is the alteration, “distortion” and recreation of one kind of culture, thought, and ideology in another kind. secondly, it has enough explanatory power for certain translation phenomena in human history and represents a new angle to translation studies. instead of focusing on how to translate or evaluate translations, or whether translation should be literal or free, it enables us to understand why certain texts are translated or forbidden to be translated, why translators delete, add or change certain contents in the source texts; and how patronage manipulates the translators, etc. the extratextual studies place translation activities in specific historical and cultural contexts and enable people to see the socio-cultural causes of translation, and in particular, the extra-linguistic influential factors behind translation. it studies translation from a macro-perspective, and makes the translation research more objective and comprehensive, constituting a great complement to other approaches to translation. as to the translation of gwr, recent years have witnessed increasing attention to gwrs translation studies in academic circles. however, due to its relatively short history, its complexity and difficulty, this kind of translation has attracted less attention than it deserves. first, compared with the large number of works produced in translation of other text types, scholars remain too much “cautious” in gwrs translation studies, which can be proved by the scarcity of the related books on the market. second, most of the few researches on gwrs translation mainly concentrate on its linguistic aspects, covering stylistic features of its translated version, principles 南京财经大学硕士学位论文 8 and criteria that should be employed, strategies and detailed techniques adopted in its translation. for example, a few articles on how to translate gwr more accurately and faithfully can be found on the website of china national knowledge infrastructure (cnki). however, other relevant phenomena in the field of gwrs translation, such as the external manipulative factors, have seldom been touched upon and remained like “a large ice-field”. in fact, gwrs translation is never a mere language shift but a process under the constraint of diverse manipulative elements, such as the current policies, social context, readers expectations, the ideologies of both the source and target cultures, poetics, the patronage of these political texts, and the owner of the news media. control over the release of the annual gwr is an index of power in the contemporary society, since information concerning politics deserves policy-makers and bureaucrats to regulate translators and press institutions behavior. gwrs translation, as an essential way to release related political information, is accordingly manipulated. 1.3 purpose and significance of the study the cultural turn and its ensuing power turn in translation study brought new dimensions and approaches to translation studies, viewing translation as a cultural phenomenon rather than a linguistic operational phenomenon. a number of scholars began to do the translation studies against a much lager background of politics and culture and tried to focus on the non-linguistic factors while viewing translation. power and manipulation became their essential topics and feminism and post-colonialism were also discussed. their study shows that there is a form of implicit manipulation deriving from the existence of a culture and of power relationships between the cultures themselves, and also forms of explicit manipulation that have the use of ideology in translation as their objectives. with the aim to discover how the final decisions are made during the gwrs translation and to broaden the research scope of political texts translation studies, inspired by scholars of manipulation school in translation studies, such as even-zohar and andre lefevere, the author of the thesis adopts lefeveres 南京财经大学硕士学位论文 9 manipulation theory to make a tentative study of the not-so-much-covered aspect of gwrs translation studies: the extratextual manipulation in the whole process of political translation. this theory just offers such an extratextual perspective for the translation study, namely, these manipulative elements defined as ideology, poetics and patronage. although lefeveres proposal of these terms are originally directed at analyzing how an original literary text is manipulated, as are commonly seen in the case study included in his book, translation, rewriting and the manipulation of literary fame, after the preliminary research in this thesis, we see it is also appropriate to serve as perspectives for the study of translating political documents such as gwr. moreover, as the “two sessions” (national peoples congress & chinese peoples political consultative conference) of 2010 have been held in beijing in march this year, the latest version of gwr enjoys its superiority as a corpus to be studied. therefore, the study of gwrs translation owns great historical and practical significance. 1.4 research methodology the study is qualitative rather than quantitative. as the author intends to explore the translation process of gwr under the theory of manipulation, the study is mainly descriptive and analytic. the descriptive theory is concerned with the governing factors of the real-life translation behavior and holds that translation always comes into being within a certain cultural environment and designed to meet some certain needs (zhang nanfeng, 2004: 183). by adopting a descriptive and analytic method, the author means to focus on the influences caused by extratextual elements to the translation process of gwr and seeks to shed some new light on this kind of political translation as well as to provide the future translators with some possible inspirations in the particular field. 1.5 structure of the thesis this thesis consists of the following parts: 南京财经大学硕士学位论文 10 the first chapter of this thesis gives a brief introduction to the background of the study, necessity and significance of further research as well as the thesis structure and component parts. chapter two is the literature review. general introduction is given concerning studies on translation of political texts and the manipulation theory at home and abroad. at the end of this chapter, critical assessments about these researches are put forward. chapter three firstly introduces the development of “power turn” in translation studies, then moves on to discuss the theoretical framework of this thesislefeveres manipulation theory as a whole and explores how these three major factors, ideology, patronage and poetics, influence the translation process via the manipulation theory. chapter four mainly consists of two parts. one offers the general introduction of translation of political texts, including types, characteristics and roles, while the rest part describes different research approaches to translation of the given text type. chapter five is the core of this thesis. using gwr and its translated version as the case, it further explicates the application of andre lefeveres translation theory in the political translation practice. the thesis mainly focuses on such non-linguistic factors as ideology, poetics, patronage and some related aspects. after the theoretical discussion in chapter three and the empirical analysis of the extratextual factors that influence the gwrs translation in this chapter, the author concludes that under the manipulation of these extratextual elements, it is advisable and necessary to “rewrite” the report so as to express chinas political stance accurately to the world as a whole. chapter six is the conclusion, which gives a brief summary of the previous parts and also points out the limitations of the thesis as well as offers suggestions for the future studies. 南京财经大学硕士学位论文 11 chapter two literature review 2.1 introduction since the main focus of this thesis is the research on translation of political texts, studies on this topic at home and abroad should be firstly discussed here so as to facilitate further studies. theoretical framework of this thesisthe manipulation theory at home and abroad will also be reviewed. in the end, previous studies on these aspects would be assessed, with the aim of highlighting the innovation of the present thesis. based on the following detailed analysis, we shall have a general outline about the development history of manipulation theory as well as that of translation of political texts. 2.2 translation of political texts for the smooth bilateral or multilateral exchanges, every country, government and related institutes need to transfer professional documents of foreign affairs into other languages, thus translation of political texts serves as one indispensable part of translation activities, which deserves our in-depth explorations and researches. 2.2.1 definition of translation of political texts according to newmark, political texts refer to authoritative statements, including political speeches, documents, etc., by ministers or party leaders; statutes and legal documents; scientific, philosophical and academic works written by acknowledged authorities (1988:39). in most cases, political texts are written on behalf of one sovereignty nation or the authorities of one government and are released to the wide public. on one hand, these texts undertake a mission of informing the masses of objective description about political activities and relevant policies on the governments domestic and foreign affairs; on the other, they embody the will of a party or nation and, to some extent, represent the fundamental interests of its people. from this perspective, translation of political texts means to render these political contents into another language linguistic-accurately and political-faithfully, since it is 南京财经大学硕士学位论文 12 one important channel for foreigners to learn about one countrys political publicity and also is the most authoritative information source of one countrys domestic situation, policies and measures, political system and stance, etc. it is translation that promotes publicity of political texts and makes political information available to the masses beyond national boundaries. the quality of translation, therefore, has a direct bearing on the desired publicity target. a good translation not only grants the rest world an opportunity to better understand one country, enhances ties with the people of foreign countries, facilitates close cross-national cooperations in such fields as