Abstract

The technique of conversion is common in the English-Chinese translation, of which many relevant studies have been made by many Chinese scholars. The technique of conversion is also applied largely into the E-C translation of Obama’s state of union address 2016, but so far, the study of the translation of Obama’s speech is far from enough. This paper uses methods of literature review, textual analysis, induction and summarization to make a study on the translation of the speech, summarizing and analyzing the statistic data of conversion used in the translated text. It is founded that there are altogether 77 conversions in the translated text among which conversions of adjectives are used most frequently. That may because the adjectives in English are often used as modifiers and in the Chinese version it must be converted into other parts of speech to conform to the reading habits of the Chinese readers. And next, the conversions of nouns occupy the second largest proposition in the target translation, occurring for 20 times, the reason for which is that in English nouns are frequently used while in the Chinese translation those nouns must be converted into other parts of speech to cater to the language habits of Chinese; thirdly, conversions of verbs make up the lowest proposition in the translation text appearing for 19 times. From the other angle, other parts of speech converted into verbs happens most frequently in the Chinese version and there are altogether 34 times. That is because verbs are often used in Chinese, while English speakers like to use nouns and prepositions which can make the translated text express the meaning of the original text complete and concisely.

 Key words: President Obama’s speech; conversion; English-Chinese translation

Contents

Abstract

中文摘要

1.Introduction-1

2.Literature review-2

2.1 The theories proposed by Nida and Catford-2

2.1.1 The Dynamic and Formal Equivalence-2

2.1.2 Catford's theory of translation shifts-3

3.Methodology-5

3.1 Research questions-5

3.2 The text under study-5

3.3 Data collection-6

4. Study of the conversion in the text under study-6

4.1The general description-6

4.2 Verbs converted into other parts of speech-7

4.2.1 Verbs converted into nouns-8

4.2.2 Verbs converted into adverbs-9

4.3 Nouns converted into other parts of speech-10

4.3.1 Nouns converted into verbs-10

4.3.2 Nouns converted into adjectives-11

4.4 Adjective converted into other parts of speech-12

4.4.1 Adjective converted into nouns-12

4.4.2 Adjective converted into adverbs-13

4.4.3 Adjective converted into verbs-13

4.5 Adverbs converted into other parts of speech-13

4.5.1 Adverbs converted into adjectives-14

4.5.2 Adverbs converted into nouns-14

4.6 Preposition converted into verbs-14

5. Conclusion-15

Reference-16

Acknowledgements-17

Appendix-18