2.2 Study on the political text

The social function of political text refers to the great influence of the expression of language of all forms of activities carried out on politics. Political texts usually include politicians and other political activists’ various forms of political speeches aimed at achieving certain political purposes. Political text is the written political language.

The state is the instrument of class domination, and the President of the state, as the ruler of a nation, possesses supreme power. China is a country of proletarian dictatorship, and the leader of the country is major player in political event in China, and their actions represent the image of the country. Their speeches in any government conferences and other political activities will choose the most appropriate language according to the context, to achieve the purpose of domination, and thus to influence the people and all trades and professions.

I've discovered that many of the political languages that we're familiar with are often used in a variety of political contexts by the politicians, and they've been made a symbol that has put an indelible mark on the minds of the people. For example, from the very beginning "planned economy", "market economy" to "the four cardinal principles" and later "adhere to the socialist road", and in recent years to hear the "three represents", "independent, peaceful co-existence", "harmonious society", "keep pace with The Times", "eight honors, eight disgraces" etc. A lot of political terms, they frequently appear on the TV, radio, newspapers, and magazines, for the ruling class to control people's ideology.

In their book Discourse Analysis, Gillian Brown and George Yule adopt only two terms to describe the major functions of language and emphasize that this pision is an analytic convenience. It would be unlikely that, on any occasion, a natural language utterance would be used to fulfill only one function, to the total exclusion of the other. That function which language serves in the expression of  “content”, we will  describe as transactional, and that function involved in expressing social relations and personal attitudes we will describe as interactional (Brown&Yule 14).

This principle is especially apparent in the use of political text. National leaders often use the form of speeches to publicize the current political situation and strategy. Then the relevant department will organize it into a document. In addition, when leaders use language to express their positions or views in political activities, especially in diplomatic activities, the interactive function of the language will be reflected.

3. Theory Framework

3.1 Julian House’s translation quality assessment

The evaluation of the quality of the translation has to depend on certain criteria, and  the  standard  is  determined  by  the  understanding  of  the  translation,  and      the definition of translation. Different translation concepts produce different translation standards, different translation strategies and methods, which lead to  different translation quality concepts and different translation evaluation methods. Julian House knows those theories very well and she clearly proposed the theory above in her book Translation Quality Assessment: A model revisited (1997) and in her other papers. Julian House stresses that her theory is mainly based on the Halliday’s systematic-functional linguistics. As with the original model described, the revised model (1997), too, defines translation as the replacement of a text in the source language by a semantically and pragmatically equivalent text in the target language. An adequate translation is, then, a pragmatically and semantically equivalent one. Besides, she supplements that the quality of translation is also related to the equivalent function. It has two aspects, including ideational function and interpersonal function between the ST (source text) and the TT (target language). In the revised House model, the resultant scheme for textual analysis, comparison and assessment is as follows: