摘 要

“一带一路”倡议的提出与实施，不仅为中国及沿路国家的经济发展做出了卓越的贡献，更为具有中国特色的思想及文化的传播搭建了一个良好的平台。为了更好地向世界阐释“一带一路”倡议和计划，必须高度重视相关新闻的英文翻译质量和效果，因此从传播学视角对“一带一路”政治类新闻进行翻译研究是十分必要的。

本文以跨文化传播理论及翻译理论为指导，结合时政新闻翻译策略，通过对于“一带一路”政治类新闻英文翻译的传播效果进行研究分析得出：在对政治类新闻进行翻译时，为保证信息的准确性以及受众的接受度，在选词时应高度谨慎，避免使用易引起争议的词汇；其次，所选词汇应尽量符合“政治等效”原则等结论。

关键词：一带一路；跨文化传播；时政新闻；翻译策略；中国方案

Abstract

Belt and Road Initiative has not only made outstanding contributions to the economic development of China and the countries alongside, but also set up a good platform for the dissemination of thoughts and culture with Chinese characteristics. We must attach great importance to the quality and effectiveness of English translation of related news. Therefore, the translation is very necessary from the perspective of communication.

Under the guidance of intercultural communication theory and translation theory and the combination of the translation strategy of political news, this paper studies and analyzes the communication effects of Belt and Road political news in English translation, and concludes that in order to ensure the accuracy of the information and the acceptability to the audience, translators should be careful in choosing the words and avoiding the use of controversial words. In addition, the selected words should conform to the conclusion of the principle of “political equivalence”.

Key Words：Belt and Road Initiative; Cross-Cultural Communication; Political News； Translation Strategy; China’s plan

Content

1 Introduction 4

2 Literature Review 5

2.1 Translation Studies from Perspective of Communication Abroad 6

2.2 Translation Studies from Perspective of Communication at Home 7

3 Translation Strategies of Political News in Communication 8

3.1 Effective Communication Via Translation 9

3.1.1 the interrelationship between political news translation and communication 9

3.1.2 the standard of political news translation in communication 10

3.2 Translation Strategies of “B amp; R” Initiative 11

3.2.1 the principal of equivalence 11

3.2.2 the principal of conciseness 13

4 The Effective Communication of China’s Plan 14

4.1 From Passive Response to Active Interpretation 15

4.1.1 the progress of political news translation 15

4.1.2 the challenge of political news translation 16

4.2 From Being Misunderstood to Being Welcomed 18

4.2.1 telling china’s plan in western way of thinking 18

4.2.2 strengthening equal communication and mutual trust 19

5 Conclusions 20

Reference 22

Acknowledgements 24

An Analysis of the Translation of Belt and Road Political News in English from the Perspective of Communication

Introduction

As a project initiated by the Chinese government, Belt and Road Initiative has great influence in the world. Based on the ancient silk road, this initiative is mainly divided into 2 parts, they are “The Silk Road Economic Belt” and “The 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road”. The initiative brings Asian, European and African countries closer together and promotes mutually beneficial cooperation among countries along the routes. The starting point of the road is China, through the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean, and finally gets to Europe, and the other route begins from the coast of China, travels through the south China sea, and ends in the south Pacific. On land, the Belt and Road Initiative promotes the establishment of a new Eurasian land bridge and the use of international transport routes for economic development. At sea, the Belt and Road Initiative aims to build a smooth, safe and efficient maritime transport corridor connecting major ports alongside the route.

Contrary to popular opinion in China, the Belt and Road Initiative has received mixing reviews in international world. In world major powers, the UK is highly concerned about and open to this initiative, while Australia has a positive attitude towards economic cooperation with China. But United States does not support it. On the other hand, Canada remains neutral. In addition, some countries believe that China is trying to change the Eurasian geopolitical landscape by linking the Belt and Road Initiative with the South China Sea issue. Some sceptics hold China Threat Theory and defame the Belt and Road Initiative as China’s Marshall plan. Due to the lack of understanding and prejudice of the international community towards China, more accurate dissemination of China’s ideas and initiatives is the priority of China’s foreign publicity. Therefore, to improve the communication effect, translators should take an eye on the influence of political news on communication. (Jiang, 2019)

This paper analyzes the translation of “Bamp;R” political news from the perspective of communication on the basis of the internal and external news communication research. Translation of such news is vital to the construction of China’s image and discourse power. From an interdisciplinary perspective, this paper will discuss the translation process and principles of current political news, analyze the translation strategies of current political news, and summarize the effective translation method of improving the communicative effect of political news translation.

This paper consists of 5 chapters. The first part is the introduction which produces the research target, background, significance and the structure of this paper. For the second chapter, it will discuss the previous researches both abroad and at home about translation and cross-cultural communication which includes the brief introduction about the influence of the Belt and Road Initiative. For the third chapter, it discusses the translation strategies of political news combined with communication. Next, in the fourth chapter, it talks about the effective communication of China’s plan. The last chapter is the conclusion. It contains the experience and lessons of political news translation we should take in later political news translation work.

Literature Review

Translation studies is a highly integrated and independent discipline originating from the 20th century. It involves many elements, such as linguistics, literature, art, communication and so on. As an activity of cross-cultural information exchange, its essence is communication. In translation methods such as interpretation, machine translation, literary translation and scientific translation, the main function of translation is to spread information. Since its emergence, translation has been the focus of scholars’ research. Moreover, when take the approach of communication to study the translation of political news, the paper may get new findings in an interdisciplinary perspective.

Translation Studies from Perspective of Communication Abroad

In the 1840s, communication emerged as a new discipline in the west, founded by Weber Shannon. D. McGuire and s. Wendell, one of the founders of American communication studies, pointed out in The Theory of the Mode of Mass Communication that communication is a process in which an individual or group transmits information, ideas, attitudes and emotions to other individuals or groups mainly through symbols. (D. McGuire, S. Wendell, 1987) This kind of dissemination is a universal phenomenon that goes on all the time. It is a structured information process. By the 1970s and 1980s, communication had become a prominent school with numerous theories and works in North America, Western Europe, Japan and other developed countries.

Although translation has a long history, its real division into independent disciplines has been the second half of the 20th century. A paper published in 1972 by James Holmes, a Dutch American scholar, drew the line at translation studies, which made translation become an independent discipline. In the early 1950s, western scholars’ researches on translation were mainly based on linguistics. By the 1960s, Nida applies communication approach to study translation and introduces the theory of information into translation studies. In his book Toward a Science of Translation, he refers to the communication process model of information scholar Shannon, proposes the translation model, and applies the concepts of channel capacity and redundancy in communication to solve the problem of information overload in translation. (Nida, 1964) In The book The Science of Translation: Problems and Methods, Wolfram Wilss emphasizes that translation is a special way of inter-language information transmission related to linguistic behavior and choice, aiming at the neglect of information transmission characteristics in previous Translation studies. (Wilss, 2001) In Roger Bell’s book Translation and translating: In Theory and Practice, which is based on Information Theory, he expounds the translation process mode and proposes nine steps of translation, including information reception, decoding, encoding and receiving. (Roger,1991) In foreign studies, the studies on translation from the perspective of communication science are only in a small number. Don’t mention the studies on the combination of news translation analysis and communication methods. In addition, few articles published by foreign scholars studying news translation from the perspective of communication, but Tom Cheesman and Arnd Michael Nohl applied the gatekeeper theory in communication to study the translation of BBC English coverage of the 2008 US presidential election in non-English speaking countries such as Arabia. (Chessman, Nohl, 2011)

Translation Studies from Perspective of Communication at Home

The studies of news translation in China started pretty late. The relevant materials that can be collected are mostly the research results after 1990s. The earliest records can be traced back to the 1980s in a few journals like “Shanghai Science and Technology Translation”. Nevertheless, in the last 20 years, due to the great changes of the times and the cultural and economic background, Chinese scholars have paid more attention to this field. In addition, as an interdisciplinary subject, news translation can also be regarded as an information dissemination activity. Despite of the translation studies in linguistics, the theories of communication also occupy a great percentage in the guidance of the practice of news translation. However, according to Huang Qin’s finding on news translation studies of China in past 30 years (from 1979 to 2006), 61% of the published research papers of news translation emphasize on the aspects of stylistic features and translation methods.(Huang, 2007) Afterwards, scholar Yang Fengjun (2012) analyzed the current situation of news translation research in China from 2007 to 2011, and the results showed that news translation had become more interdisciplinary and “journalistic” during this period. (Yang,2012)

China’s communication studies started relatively late, and most universities have connected communication studies with journalism for teaching and research, and there are few independent studies related to communication studies. In the last two years, domestic communication studies have been developing in a good trend. However, both at home and abroad, there are few studies on political news translation connected with communication. In the last decade, Lu Yang and Xie Zhe (2005) mainly discusses the translation under the communication theory system from communication mode, communication function, mass communication and communication object theory. Wang Ziling brought translation process the framework of communication (Wang, 2008). Some scholars have also studied specific issues in translation from the perspective of cross-cultural communication, however, there are only few of articles that specifically study news translation from the perspective of communication, such as Tang Jiamei’s “The communication perspective of news translation and its influence”(Tang,2007) ; Wu Lei’s “news translation research from the perspective of communication” (Wu, 2009) and Lei Fang’s “Translation of current political news from the perspective of communication”(Lei, 2016).

If we want to have a comprehensive and thorough understanding of news translation, we must conduct interdisciplinary research on it. From the perspective of communication, this paper will analyze the translation of political news of Belt and Road Initiative by combining the translation strategies, linguistics, stylistics and other knowledge of foreign publicity, so as to develop a new paradigm of political news translation research and improve the communication effect of Chinese foreign publicity news.

Translation Strategies of Political News in Communication

Due to its great importance and seriousness, the political news has attracted the close attention of the media all over the world. And improper translation will cause incorrect delivery of information. For example, if the structure of the translated text does not conform with the language habits of the source language, the audience don’t understand what they read. Therefore, the translator should not only avoid the distortion of information when they are translating, but also try to conform with the language habits of the audience in the process of conveying the information. Since there are tremendous differences in Chinese and western cultures, politics, and language habits, it’s not easy to achieve perfect communication. Thus, in the process of political news translation, appropriate translation strategies should be adopted to ensure the dissemination of information.

Effective Communication Via Translation

The fundamental purpose of communication is to convey information through meaningful symbols. between people and society or among people. Moreover, translation has the general nature of communication. Generally speaking, translation is a dynamic information transferring process which is composed of communication relations. Differing from the ordinary communication process, translation is carried out in a cross-cultural way, and the communication carrier is the culture code.

the interrelationship between political news translation and communication

Before we discuss the interrelationship between political news translation and communication, let’s figure out what is translation firstly. Here are some definitions by scholars: In the opinion of J. C. Catford, “Translation is a process of language operation, that is, replacing one language text with another.”(Catford, 1965:20) Barhudarov ( 1975) held the opinion that Translation is the process of changing the speech product of one language into the speech product of another language while keeping the content, meaning unchanged. Nida, a famous translator, said that “Translation is to find the natural equivalence of the information in the receiving language as close as possible to the information in the source language.” (Nida, 1964:159) According to the definition, translation can be regarded as the process that the translator passes information from source language to target language. Then, the target audience receives information, finally generates feedback. To some extent, the nature of translation is an activity of information transfer, as a kind of cross-cultural information exchange activity, process of translation is similar to the process of communication.