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Political language owns some unique characteristics. It often uses precise language and fixed structure to convey concise information. We can sense the characteristics of political language from the two aspects: formal style and authoritative tone. Since the political language is directly related to the image of a country, it definitely demands a formal language style to maintain the authority and solemnity of the high status. Unlike the language style of ordinary speeches, political language is a restricted pattern in which the choices of the word and sentence structure are limited so that readers or listeners are to be imbued with a sense of solemnity and authority. Most of the words used in political language are formal and standard, such as “促进”, “落实”,“改善”. This feature is showed in the following example:
实施人才强国战略，大力培养、积极引进和合理使用各类人才，高层次、高技能人才队伍不断壮大。
The authoritative tone is another distinctive feature of political language. There should be no room for argument. As a result, high sounding words, clear logic are frequently used in political language. In short, political language needs to be strong in order to stress its authoritativeness. For instance:
坚决反对和遏制“台独”分裂活动，捍卫国家主权与领土完整，文护台海和平。实施一系列有利于人员往来和经济科技教育文化体育交流的措施，促进了两岸关系的和平稳定发展。
3. Functional equivalence in written government report
The foreign affairs activities are inevitably related to such important aspects as politics, economics, military affairs, internal affairs of a country etc, which is not suitable to publish either because of such factors as the immensity of the time, the uncertainty of the circumstance or the limit of the power, all of which make the speaker speak in a prudent way. Translation of the government report is part of this, which aims at introducing our past achievements and making China known to the outside world. Therefore, the translation of the Report is related to politics. This requires the translator of great morality and sharp political awareness, for any mistake may result in undesirable consequence. Therefore, equivalence cannot be overstressed in the whole process. In the report, where precise information is of primary importance, most words take on their conceptual meaning and words without emotive overtone is preferred. However, some terms in the Report may take on political connotations, which is an important part in the diction of political texts. For example:
(1) 反对“台独”等各种分裂图谋的斗争深入开展。
The fight against “Taiwan independence” and other attempts to split the country has been going on in depth.
Here the highlighted term “台独” takes on its literal and positive meaning as “Taiwan independence”, which will mislead people to regard that it is right for Taiwan to be independent from Chinese mainland. Therefore, the political connotation inherent in “台湾独立” should be represented in the translation. The Report states affirmatively that we Chinese people will safeguard our state sovereignty and territorial integrity with firm resolve. The term shall be better interpreted into “Taiwan separation” in accordance with those negative terms in the Report as “Taiwan separatist forces’ schemes”.
The report does not aspire for aesthetic beauty, but they are plain in writing and critical in the choice of word. As a formal style, most words in the report are relatively formal. These features can be found from the following example:
(2) 加强对司法工作的监督，惩治司法领域中的腐败。建设一支政治坚定、业务精通作风优良、执法公正的司法队伍。
We will tighten supervision over the judicial work and punish corruption is this field. We will build up a contingent of judicial personnel who are politically steadfast and professionally competent, have a fine style of work and enforce laws impartially.