Text Linguistics and Translation: An Empirical Perspective on English-Chinese Translation in the United Nations

Abstract Document translation in the context of the Unite Nations, which involves a colossal system of documentation with a huge variety of subject-matters, should be considered as a specialised translating activity. A relevant theoretical framework is needed to explore and contribute to the actual practices on the ground, much remaining to be done in this respect, though. The present study attempts to explore the possibility of precise understanding of source text and its accurate rendering into target language, by focusing on some aspects of the text linguistics as the theoretical reference points, and based on the empirical evidences in the English to Chinese translation of the UN documents. It tries to explore how much the role of text or discourse analysis can play in the study, and hopefully in the contributions to the quality improvement, of such a specialised activity as UN document translation.