论2014年政府工作报告英译本中的名词化现象

论文总字数：24667字

摘 要

本文以2014年政府工作报告为对象，对名词化现象进行分析研究。全文共出现名词化现象119处。名词化现象在政府工作报告翻译过程中的优势包括简洁性和客观性。本文基于定量分析法对政府报告中所出现的名词化现象的频率进行分析并对这119处名词化现象进行分类，发现动词名词化现象出现的频率远高于其他形式的名词化现象并期望政府报告的翻译能更上一层楼。

关键词: 名词化现象；2014年政府工作报告；定量分析法；简洁性；客观性

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 1

3. Different Types of Nominalization 3

4. Classification of Nominalization 4

4.1 De-verbal nominaliaztion 4

4.2 Zero-derivational nominalization 9

4.3 De-adjective nominalization 11

5. Works Cited 13

1. Introduction

Report on the Work of the Government is delivered every year at the National People"s Congress by premier of the State Council. It belongs to Chinese official article. The English version of Report on the Work of the Government is delivered by national agency-Xinhua News Agency. Report on the Work of the Government 2014 was delivered at the Second Session of the Twelfth National People’s Congress on March 5, by Li Keqiang, Premier of the State Council. It is the first time that the new session of Premier of the State Council, Li Keqiang, delivered Report on the Work of the Government. It is the first time that the new collective leadership, under the leadership of Comrade Xi Jinping as General Secretary. It is no doubt that the successful translation of Report on the Work of the Government is beneficial to establish a good image of our country.

It is obvious that nominalization happened more frequently in the English version of the Report on the Work of the Government 2014. It is because of the basic differences between these two languages in the process of Chinese-English translation. There are mainly two reasons for the formation of nominalization in the process of Chinese-English translation. One lies in the difference between Chinese and English grammatical structure and the other is the difference in cognitive style between Chinese and Western. It is found that there are more verbs used than nouns and prepositions in Chinese while there are more nouns used in English so that Chinese students always feel confused when they read and translate English sentences and articles.

The total number of nominalization is up to 119 times, thus this thesis mainly focuses on studying and analyzing verbal and adjective nominalization and figures out the types. At last,the final aim is that the conclusion of the thesis will be applied both in the theory and the practice of official articles’ translation.

2. Literature Review

In recent years, much more attention has been paid to the translation of Report on the Work of the Government.

In Foreign Language Research 2010, a paper, named A Corpus-based Analysis of Central Key Words in Chinese Government Work Reports, is based on the Report on the Work of the Government from 1978-2010 (Di Yanhua amp; Yang Zhong, 2010: 69). There is another paper from Foreign Language Research. The paper is based on the application of cohesion theory in political literature translation with the case study of Report on the Work of the Government 2010 (Hu Fengsheng, Jing Bo, and Li Xin, 2012: 89). Wu Guangjun, the professor of Beijing International Studies University, pointed the problem of unnecessary words in the English Version of Report on the Work of the Government 2010 and made some suggestions for improvement (Wu Guangjin, 2010: 64). In View on Publishing, based on the English Version of Report on the Work of the Government from 2010 to 2013, the author, Chen Hao, mainly focused on the translation of words with Chinese characteristics, such as well-off society, rural workers, combating corruption and promoting clean government Scientific Outlook on Development and etc (Chen Hao, 2013: 82).

Through the survey research in the Report on the Work of the Government 2011, it is found that foreigner readers had a better understanding in discourse level, however, the English version brought more problems in terms of vocabulary and sentence level(Wu Guangjun amp; Zhao Wenjing, 2013: 85).

The thesis is to investigate the nominalization in the Report on the Work of the Government 2014 and concludes the advantage of nominalization in the process of Chinese-English translation, such as conciseness and objectivity. The Report on the Work of the Government mainly focuses on the review of work in the previous year, general work arrangements and major tasks for the next year, which are separated from human participants.

Nominalization happens in language all over the world. In linguistics, the nominalization is the use of a verb, an adjective or an adverb as the head of noun phrase, with or without morphological transformation. To some extent, the study of nominalization can be tracked to Ancient Greece Plato and Aristotle’s period. Although they did not put forward the term of nominalization, they divided word classes into nominal component and verbal component. The first man who put forward the concept of English nominalization is Jespersen. Since then, nominalization as one of the universal phenomenon has attracted widely attention from different schools and fields.

Halliday argued that nominalization refers to any element or group of elements which can function as noun or noun group in a clause (Halliday, 2000: 41). From the viewpoint of linguistician, the main types of nominalization are to use the noun to indicate process or comments. According to Halliday, language is a multilevel system, including at least three levels-phonology, discourse and lexico-grammar, which are reflected by each other. There are two forms reflecting discourse semantics, named congruent form and incongruent form(Halliday and Ruqaiya, 1994: 320). Under the requirement of congruent form, the process should be reflected by verb. However, in the incongruent form, the noun can indicate process.

3. Different Types of Nominalization

This thesis is based on the quantitative analysis method and finds that 119 nominalizations were in the Report on the Work of the Government 2014, which verbal nominalization accounts for 99.1%. It is concluded that the verbal nominalization is important in Chinese-English translation. Following is the table of occurrence and frequency of different types of nominalization in the English version of Report on the Work of the Government 2014.

Table 3

From the table , it can be seen that there are 118 verbal nominalizations and 1 adjectival nominalization and it reflects that verbal nominalization is more common in English than adjectival nominalization. It also can be found that the frequencies of different means of nominalization is diverse, such as deverbal nouns gt; zero derivation and in deverbal nouns, -tiongt;-inggt;-mentgt;-siongt;-ship.

4. Classification of Nominalization

There are two kinds of nominalization in the Report on the Work of Government 2014. One is de-adjective nominalization and the other is de-verbal nominalization. There are also two cases of de-verbal nominalization. One is to produce nouns from another part of speech via the addition of derivational suffixes. The other is to produce nouns without any additional morphology, which is referred as zero-derivation.

4.1 De-verbal nominalization

4.1.1-tion

In the English version of Report on the Work of the Government 2014, there are 40 verbal nominalization phenomena with suffix-tion, which account for 45.5% of deverbal nouns. And it reflects that deverbal nouns with suffix-tion are more commonly used in English. These kinds of words mainly include industrialization(工业化)，information(信息化)，urbanization(城镇化)，marketization(市场化)，multipolarization(多极化)，economic globalization(经济一体化) and so on. Instead of extensive use of information tools, the nominalization word-information makes target readers better understanding the meaning and makes the English version more concise and objective.

Followings are examples of deverbal nouns with suffix-tion in the English version of Report on the Work of the Government 2014.

1 On behalf of the State Council, I now present to you the report on the work of the government for you deliberation, and I welcome comments on my report of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Conference（CPPCC).

现在，我代表国务院，向大会作政府报告，请予审议，并请全国政协各位委员提出意见。

In this sentence, deliberation has two roles. To listener, it is a process of deliberating while from the perspective of syntactic structure, it severs as the object.

2 The protection and use of intellectual property rights will be strengthened.

加强知识产权保护和运用。

The congruent form might be: We should protect and use intellectual property in more intensive way.

Nominalization can form a kind of non-personalized tactics through hiding the doer., which can make the sentence appear more objective and factual. In above sentence, through nominalization, protection and use, the subject we is hided.

3 We tightened financial supervision and liquidity management, thus ensuring sound financial operations.

加强金融监管和流动性管理，保持金融稳健运行。

In this example, it cannot be found subject in the Chinese version while 运行was translated into operation, the translator added the subject we to make the target reader better understanding the meaning of Premier. The nominalization, operation, was modified by an adjective -sound which made the expression more vividly.

4 We will advance the reform of the tax system by taking the following steps: Extend trials for replacing business tax with VAT to the railway transport, postal and telecommunications services industries, abolish fees and replace them with taxes, reform the excise tax and resource tax, and move ahead with legislation on a property tax and environmental protection tax.

推进税收制度改革，把“营改增”试点扩大到铁路运输﹑邮政服务﹑电信等行业，清费立税，推动消费税﹑资源税改革，做好房地产税﹑环境保护税立法相关工作。

In this example, the nominalization, legislation, serves as the object of move ahead with, which acts as both verb and noun.

4.1.2-ment

The total use of deverbal nouns with a derivational suffix-ment accounts to 20 in the material, such as development(发展), adjustment(调整,调节), investment(投资,投入), management(管理; 操纵; 经营手段), employment(就业;雇用), reemployment(再就业), resettlement(重新安置) and etc. Followings are some examples.

1 To deliver a good performance in the work of government this year, we need to deepen reform so as to create powerful impetus, carry out structural adjustment as our main priority, and making improving people"s wellbeing our fundamental goal.

做好今年政府工作，要以深化改革为强大动力，以调整结构为主攻方向，以改善民生为根本目的。

In this sentence, instead of saying “We need to deepen reform so as to create powerful impetus. Our priority is to adjust the structure and fundamental goal is to make improving people"s wellbeing”, it makes the two sentences into one sentence and at the same time the sentence structure becomes terser.

2 Governments at all levels should increase spending on building government-subsidized housing, improve its quality, ensure its fare allotment, and improve the mechanism government its allotment and re-allotment.

各级政府要增加财政投入，提高建设质量，保证公平分配，完善准入退出机制。

In this example, although action nouns are started by ensure, improve, the action meaning still focuses on the verbal nominalization.

3 General Work Arrangements for 2014

2014年工作总体部署

In this example, the noun phrase is used as a sub-title in the report on the wok of the government 2014. However, in terms of the meaning of sentence, the nominalization, arrangement, acts with the characteristics of both noun and verb.

4.1.3-ing

In Report on the Work of the Government, the phenomenon, deverbal nouns with suffix -ing, is often used to translate the terms in the field of politics with Chinese characteristics, such as reform and opening up (改革开放), safe drinking water(饮水安全问题), fighting corruption and promoting clean government(反腐倡廉) and etc. The other function of deverbal nouns with suffix-ing is its grammar role. They can be used as subject, object, and apposition and so on. There are some examples.

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