Abstract

Under the trend of globalization, China has gained its momentum in development to become the world’s second largest economic entity and play an important role on the global stage. While growing stronger, China has associated with other countries more closely in all aspects. However, until now there exist misunderstandings among countries since many people in foreign countries have little knowledge about China’s social environment. Government Work Report (GWR), as the most widespread document, is catching more attention.

The GWR covers all aspects of people’s life including politics, economy, culture and the national condition and development plans. Translation realizes its value by helping to convey it to the whole world. This thesis aims to conduct a study on the translation of political texts from the perspective of critical discourse analysis (CDA). The translation of GWR in 2016 is taken for data analysis. It aims to dig out the factors of changes in linguistic forms by comparing two versions.

CDA advocates that language is determined by social functions and differences of linguistic structures are the manifestations of differences of ideologies. The thesis takes Halliday’s systemic-functional grammar (SFG) as the major method of CDA. Chinese experts Xin Bin and Hu Zhuangling collected M.A.K. Halliday’s and Norman Fairclough’s theories and classified them into four systems: Classification, transitivity, modality and transformation. Based on these systems, the research analyzes the process of classification, transformation and production from the linguistic level. Then it digs the relation between linguistic forms and ideology by putting two texts under particular social background.

In the translation of political discourses like GWR, the ideological factors have a great influence on the choices and applications of linguistic forms, and the forms of language also influence the spreading and understanding of ideological meaning. This thesis provide data analysis and reference for studies afterwards.

Key words: Critical Discourse Analysis, Political Texts, Government Work Report , C-E Translation

Contents

Abstract

中文摘要

Chapter One    Introduction-1

1.1 Research Background-1

1.2 Objective of the Research-1

1.3 Thesis Structure-2

Chapter Two    Literature Review-3

2.1 Previous Studies concerning CDA-3

2.2 Previous Studies in Translation concerning CDA-5

Chapter Three    Theoretical Framework-8

3.1 Halliday's Meta-functions-8

3.2 Analytical Methods-9

3.2.1 Transitivity-9

3.2.2 Classification-11

3.2.3 Modality-18

Chapter Four  Critical Analysis of GWR translation-16

4.1 Analysis of Transitivity in GWR-16

4.2 Analysis of Classification in GWR-18

4.3 Analysis of Modality in GWR-17

Chapter Five   Conclusion-20

5.1 Summary-20

5.2 Evaluation-20

5.3 Limitations and suggestions-20

References-22

文献综述报告-23