Abstract

There is modality in every communication and there are diverse ways to express modality in each language. Both English and Chinese have their own systems of modality. Many scholars have studied modal verbs and their translations from different perspectives. However, there are relatively few translation studies on modal verbs in political speeches. This paper chooses President Obama’s State of the Union Address 2016 as the research text. Based on the theories of M. A. K. Halliday and D. Biber, this paper studies the modal value and semantic features of modal verbs in this speech, tries to analyze the corresponding and non-corresponding situations, and thus puts forward some practical translation strategies. The research indicates: (1) The total number of modal verbs used in this speech is 104 accounting for 19.1‰, of which CAN, WILL and SHOULD most frequently appear and it is apparent that modal verbs of median value take up the maximum proportion, more than half. (2) Modal verbs used most frequently have different meanings in different sentences, of which CAN in this speech contains over two-thirds meaning indicating ability, WILL in this lecture has more occurrences meaning prediction than willingness and the proportions of the semantic meanings of SHOULD — obligation and presumption — are almost the same. (3) In the Chinese translation of modal verbs of the text under study, there are two kinds of situations: corresponding and non-corresponding. The English modal verbs are correspondingly translated into Chinese modal verbs, adverbs, negative ones and so on. The researcher further proposes more than five translation strategies: verbatim translation, change of word order and modal value, omission, addition and flexible translation. All the strategies are to better convey the original meaning and intent of Obama’s speech.

Key Words: President Obama; State of the Union Address 2016; modal verbs; E-C translation strategies

Contents

Abstract

中文摘要

1 Introduction 1

2 Literature Review.2

2.1 Definitions of Modality and Modal Verbs..2

2.2 Classifications of Modal Verbs3             

2.3 Previous Studies5

3 Methodology..6

3.1 Research Questions..6

3.2 Introduction to the Text under Study ..6

3.3 Data Collection..7

4 Results and Discussion.. ..7

4.1 A Panoramic View of Distribution of Modal Verbs7

4.2 Distribution of Different Values of Modal Verbs8

4.3 Semantic Distribution of Frequent Modal Verbs11

 4.3.1 CAN..11

 4.3.2 WILL..12

 4.3.3 SHOULD..13

4.4 Analyses of Modal Verbs and Their Chinese Translations14

 4.4.1 Contrastive Analyses of E-C Translation14

 4.4.2 E-C Translation Strategies of Modal Verbs16

5 Conclusion.19

References.21

Acknowledgements..22