Study of Functions of Midget Words in the Speeches of Barack Obama #160; #160; #160; #160; 1 Introduction 1.1 Research background Public speaking is the process of speaking to a group of people in a structured, deliberate manner which intends to inform, influence, or entertain the listeners. The most representative person is Brack Obama. Obama (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th President of the United States from 2009 to 2017. He is the first African American to have served as president, as well as the first born outside the contiguous United States. Obama was once named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Obama's most significant legacy is generally considered to be the#160;Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which went into effect from 2010 to 2020.#160;Obama is a talented speaker who uses powerful words to appeal to people, persuade people and win support from them. Obama and his speeches are paid much attention to by many Chinese people, so many of his speeches have been translated into Chinese. Without so many complex words and structures in his speeches, his speeches make flexible use of midget words, which are outstanding examples for English learners and anyone who want to give a successful publish address. 1.2 Need for the study Practically speaking, the study on function of midget word is beneficial to English teachers and students. How to be more native is a big issue in English learning, so acquiring the skill of using midget words must be very useful. Midget word can make your content concise. For example, Deng Xiaoping once said in Chinese ”如果说构想，这就是我们的构想#8217; when he meet foreign guest generalizing Chinese socialism. In this case, if we translate verbatim, this sentence can be verbose. Official translation is well, those are our plans. This word ”well#8217;, one of midget words, is subtle and accurate. It is unnecessary to use complicated and obscure words frequently. According to a survey, frequent words of English are about 4,000. As university students, we, in fact, has acquired basic vocabulary when we graduated from high school. However, we still can#8217;t express what we want to say easily. What is wrong with our learning? The reason is associated with the use of midget word to some extent. Theoretically speaking, this study plays an important role in further development of translation. Midget words, simple but powerful, are easy to be understood, make the translation more natural. As we all know, Sun Yat-sen once put forward one concept”三民主义#8217;in Chinese, which was translated to Three Principles at first and then changed to ”the government people of the people, by the people, and for the people. The translator referred to the speech given by Lincoln in Gettysburg, using three prepositions to express clearly. In some sense, translation is to pass on meanings, so grabbing the characteristic of source language and target language seems to be vital. Thinking is the internal content of language while language is the external medium of thinking. It is the different thinking patterns that shape the static feature of English and the dynamic feature of Chinese. Prepositions are static while verbs are dynamic. The above example shows us the wonder use of prepositions in translating process, which changes dynamic sentence to static sentence successfully. Except this, Chinese and English has many other similarities and differences. Generally speaking, midget word is an access to better translation. The significance of the thesis is to make contributions to the research on the translation of public speeches, all of which will be of great benefits or help to those who are engaged in the translation of public speeches or those who are planning to work or study in such field; what#8217;s more, it can provide a much fresher perspective for further research of the translation of public speeches. Therefore, applying midget words to the translation of public speeches can improve the accomplishment of a large amount of the translation of public speeches greatly. 1.3 Literature review 1.3.1 Public Speeches Public speech is a speaking process to people in an organized, designed manner aimded to inform, affect, or entertain the audience. There are five basic ingredients of public speech:”who is saying what to whom using what medium with what effects?”The intention of public speeches is to simply transmit information, to motivate people to act, or to simply tell a story. Good speakers are able to not only inform their audience, but also to change their emotions. Public speeches can also be powerful tools to be used to realize the purposes such as to motivate, to influence, to persuade, to inform, and to translate. 1.3.2 Previous studies As Barack Obama#8217;s speeches are excellent among political speeches, there are many papers analyzing it from different perspectives such as stylistic, rhetoric, etymology, pragmatics and so on. Peng Wenming and Li Huaping(2012) attaches importance to stylistic, so do Zeng YapingHuang Zhending(2009), Jiang Lei(2015), Rui YanfangLiying(2014). They analyzes Obama#8217;s speeches according to voice, vocabulary, syntax, discourse. Some scholars study from rhetoric including Li Yamei(2011), Chen Fan(2014), Zhou Hongbin(2016) and so on. Among them some are especially interested in metaphor like Wu Xingmei(2015), Sha Feng(2012), Zhang Lijuan(2012). Besides, some authors research on pragmatics. Wang TaoGaopeng(2011), carry out a study on ”I#8217; and ”we#8217;, which is subtle, pointing out their different meanings and functions and Obama#8217;s strategic choice. Under the guidance of communicative translation, Li Ying(2016) makes a contrast between there translation versions, thinking that communicative translation plays a big role in translating political speeches into Chinese. In terms of etymology, Li Guohua(2013) makes efforts to reflect origin of powerful words and concerning translation methods. And there are other kinds of studies#8212; to make a contrast analysis between speeches of Obama , former American President and those of Xi Jinping, state president of China，or to refer to traditional translation standard such as one put forward by Yan Fu. Although many studies are associated with Obama#8217;s speeches, there are few about the use of midget words in his speeches. Therefore, this paper tries to study in this field, presenting methods of translating midget word and how to better use them. Work cited Altenberg, B., Granger, S. (2001). The grammatical and lexical patterning of MAKE in native and non-native student writing. Applied Linguistics. Deng, Y. C., Xiao, D. F. [邓耀臣 肖德法], 2005, 中国大学生英语虚化动词搭配型式研究. 大连：外语与外语教学杂志社。

Gao, S. Q. [高顺全], 2002，动词虚化与对外汉语教学. 北京：语言教学与研究编辑部。

Grimshaw, J., Mester, A. (1988). Light verbs and theta-marking. Linguistic Inquiry. Li, C. S. [李长栓], 2004, 非文学翻译理论与实践. 北京: 中国对外翻译出版有限公司。

Li, W. [李伟], 2016, 英语对比翻译中动静态词的转换问题. 四川: 西部皮革杂志社。

Liu, J. S. [刘街生], 2013, 现代汉语的单动词使动句. 武汉：汉语学报编辑部。

Shi, D.Q.[施栋琴], 2009, 2009年”英汉对比与翻译研究学科建设高层论坛”综述. 北京：外语研究。

Wang, L. F., Zhang, Y. [王立非 张岩], 2007, 大学生英语议论文中高频动词使用的语料库研究. 北京：北外外语教学与研究出版社。

Wu, J. J., Pan, P. [吴娟娟 潘藩], 2009, 基于语料库的英语动词take用法研究. 武汉：外语教育杂志编辑部。

Wu, W. Y.[吴雯颖], 2015, 英语介词翻译探析. 天津：天津教育出版社有限公司。

Zhang, D.Z. [张道真], 2013, 大学英语语法. 合肥：安徽人民出版社。