A Corpus-based Contrastive Analysis of Sino-U.S. National Defense White Papers Images, Problems and Strategies
Keywords:
national defense white paper, corpus translation studies, contrastive analysis, translation problems and strategiesAbstract
The English translations of China’s national defense white papers play crucial roles in conveying China’s defense and military policies to the international community. Their accuracy and authenticity directly impact foreign readers’ understanding of China’s defense policies and shape their perception of China. However, previous English translations have been problematic, with lengthy and difficult-to-read texts, excessive and complex nouns, and a writing style that does not conform to English conventions. This paper explores the specific translation problems, analyzes the underlying causes, and proposes feasible translation strategies. Using China’s National Defense in the New Era (CNDNE) and 2022 U.S. National Defense Strategy (2022 NDS) as sample texts, we established corpora of the national defense white papers for the two nations. With the assistance of Weiciyun and AntConc, we conducted a contrastive analysis between the original Chinese discourse and its English translation, as well as between the Chinese and American defense white papers. The analysis focused on high-frequency words and subjects to explore the images of the two countries constructed by each national defense white paper. Furthermore, this study compared the features of CNDNE and 2022 NDS using AntConc and established a parallel corpus of CNDNE by aligning sentence pairs through Tmxmall. We then utilized CUC_Paraconc to analyze the words and sentence structures in the Chinese and English versions of CNDNE, identifying translation problems in the translation and providing strategies. The findings provide insights, directions, and methods for the writing, translation and post-editing of China’s defense white paper and open new avenues for further research.
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