On the Translation of MODALITY in the 2008 Chinese Government Report

摘要

This paper aims to explore the translation of MODALITY in government reports through descriptions of and comparisons between the source and target languages, which is based on a detailed analysis of MODALITY of the original Chinese version and its English translation of the Report on the Work of the Chinese Government. It shows that the translator mainly adds the modal operators in the target text to more explicitly express the writer's/speaker's attitude in the source text based on the translator's personal interpretation, and that there are three main factors that could affect the translator's choice-making.