New trends of Chinese political translation in the age of globalisation

Abstract

This study takes issue with the prescriptive principles of faithfulness and equivalence prevailing in the circle of political translation and argues that the over-simplified view impairs a profound understanding of the intricacies and ideology involved in political translation. Following a descriptive approach, this article probes into the translation shifts demonstrated in the translation products to examine the characteristics of the translated political discourse and explore the changes of translation strategies across time. The corpus of data consists of fifteen Chinese political speeches and their English translations delivered by the state leaders in three successive periods of leadership. Through the extensive analysis of the translation shifts between the source and target texts, four types of functions are identified in terms of the roles that the translations tend to play in mediating between the source and target communities. Meanwhile, the statistics presented thereafter show that more translation shifts are involved in accommodating the target readership as China is playing a greater part in the global affairs in more recent leadership. In addition, the study presents an academic overview of the research on political translation in China and offers a dynamic picture of the evolving practice of Chinese political translation in the era of globalization.