Perspectives

Studies in Translation Theory and Practice

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Reshaping China’s image: a corpus-based analysis

of the English translation of Chinese political
discourse

Tao Li & Feng Pan

To cite this article: Tao Li & Feng Pan (2020): Reshaping China’s image: a corpus-
based analysis of the English translation of Chinese political discourse, Perspectives, DOI:
10.1080/0907676X.2020.1727540

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PERSPECTIVES
https://doi.org/10.1080/0907676X.2020.1727540

Reshaping China’s image: a corpus-based analysis of the

English translation of Chinese political discourse
Tao Lia and Feng Pan b

a
Centre for Corpus Research, Shanghai Ocean University, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China; bDepartment
of Translation and Interpreting, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, People’s Republic of
China

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Drawing on a combined framework of Appraisal System and Received 10 August 2019
Ideological Square Model, this paper conducts a corpus-based Accepted 3 February 2020
investigation of the ways in which the image of China is
KEYWORDS
(re)shaped in the English translation of Chinese political discourse Appraisal; ideology; national
in terms of appraisal epithets. The results show that (1) shifts image; political discourse;
regularly occur in the English translation of the appraisal epithets corpus-based discourse
in Chinese political discourse, though an equivalent translation analysis; Chinese-English
strategy is a canonical option for the translators of Chinese translation
political discourse; (2) translation patterns of the appraisal epithets
vary within the three sub-categories of Appraisal System, with
shifts found mostly in the translation of the negative appraisal
epithets under ‘engagement’ and ‘graduation’ subcategories; (3)
discursively, China is more negatively represented in the
translated than in the source Chinese texts. A two-layered
Ideological Square Model is proposed to account for the research
findings in terms of ideological factors in the translation of
Chinese political discourse.

Introduction
The primary concern of this study is to investigate the ways in which the image of China is
(re)shaped in the English translation of Chinese political discourse. Image research within
translation studies has largely been limited to the genre of literary texts (e.g., Frank, 2007;
Hung, 2005; Lee, 2015). In recent years, however, as image studies has become increasingly
cross-disciplinary (e.g., Baker, Gabrielatos, & McEnery, 2013; Wang, 2015), national image
in translation studies also extends from literary works to other genres, such as news (e.g.,
Caimotto, 2016; Kim, 2013, 2017; Valdeón, 2016). Meanwhile, research methods are not
limited to macro analysis by focusing ‘mainly on the selection of topics’ (van Doorslaer,
2012, p. 1054) but extend to empirical investigation of linguistic representations of
image. For instance, Caimotto (2016) carries out an interesting study of how Italy’s national
image was represented by an Italian newspaper in a corpus of 135 pieces of news which were
translated from The Times. The results show that Italy’s collocates with negative semantic
prosody in English are often transformed into words with positive or neutral semantic

CONTACT Feng Pan fengpan@hust.edu.cn 1037 Luoyu Road, Hongshan District, Wuhan, 430074, People’s
Republic of China
© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 T. LI AND F. PAN

prosody in Italian, which reveals a consistent tendency towards the mitigation of criticism of
Italy and the foregrounding of positive comments on the nation.
However, national image in translation in the Chinese context still remains underex-
plored. This paper draws on a corpus-based discourse analysis approach and a combined
framework of Appraisal System (Martin & White, 2005) and Ideological Square Model
(van Dijk, 1998, 2006), firstly, to identify the English translation patterns of appraisal
epithets, ‘the most prototypical to convey evaluative meaning’ (Munday, 2012, p. 103),
and secondly, to reveal the variations in China’s image in the English translation of
Chinese political discourse.
The reasons to adopt a corpus-based discourse analysis approach are twofold. Firstly,
although discourse analysis has been widely applied in translation studies (e.g., Hatim
& Mason, 1990; Zhang & Munday, 2018), it per se has been under severe criticism
because no discourse analyst can avoid personal bias (Widdowson, 2004, p. 102). Such cri-
ticism is responded, as Chilton, Tian, and Wodak (2010) suggest, either with a claim that
all research is subservient to interests, or with analysis of huge data rather than one or a
few texts to illustrate assumptions. Secondly, a corpus-based approach allows researchers
to capture repetitive patterns revealed across texts under investigation and to conduct the
replication of the analysis, which makes the research findings and conclusions more
reliable. A corpus-based discourse analysis approach has thus become a new methodologi-
cal direction for translation studies (Kim, 2013).
The following section introduces the combined framework of Appraisal System and
Ideological Square Model, which makes possible a practical categorisation of various
data and different comparisons. It then provides research design that is followed by the
presentation of research results and discussion in relation to ideological factors in the
Chinese-English translation of political discourse.

A combined theoretical framework

Appraisal System
‘Evaluation is central to communication and central to translation’ (Munday, 2012, p. 11).
Appraisal System was proposed to describe evaluative values in discourse and is regarded
as ‘the only systematic, detailed and elaborate framework of evaluative language.’ (Bednarek,
2006, p. 32)

According to Martin and White (2005, pp. 35–37), Appraisal System has three sub-cat-
egories, viz. ‘attitude’, ‘engagement’, and ‘graduation’. ‘Attitude’ deals with people’s feel-
ings and involves three semantic domains of feeling: ‘affect’, ‘judgement’, and
‘appreciation’. ‘Affect’ is concerned with appraisal resources for construing emotional
reactions, e.g., happy, confident, sad, anxious; ‘Judgement’ deals with attitudes towards
people’s behaviour, such as judgement of how unusual, capable, or resolute someone is,
or how truthful or ethical they are, e.g., lucky, humorous, credible, weak, stupid, manipu-
lative; and ‘appreciation’ looks at appraisal resources that construes our evaluations of
things and natural phenomena, e.g., splendid, irregular, worthless. All the three domains
of evaluation cover both positive and negative attitudes.
Attitudinal value is endowed with an inherent property of gradability that displays
greater or lesser degrees of positivity or negativity (Martin & White, 2005, p. 135).
 PERSPECTIVES 3

While investigating the translation of attitudinal meaning, this paper also takes into
account the value of ‘graduation’ because it illustrates the degree of the speaker/writer’s
attitude. ‘Graduation’ operates with the choice of up-scaling or down-scaling the intensity
of appraisal meaning in relation to ‘force’–intensification and quantification, e.g., extre-
mely, somewhat, or ‘focus’–the degree of evaluation according to the prototypicality of a
semantic category, e.g., true, basically. ‘Engagement’ is concerned with the source of atti-
tudes and dialogical space around the attitudes in discourse. It is labelled ‘monogloss’ when
bare assertions or a single source of attitude occur in a communicative context. By contrast,
‘heterogloss’ refers to locutions that allow more than one voice or dialogistic alternatives.
Within ‘heterogloss’, ‘dialogic contraction’ and ‘dialogic expansion’ can be identified. ‘Dia-
logic contraction’ is when the speaker/writer closes down dialogic space for alternative
viewpoints of external voices, e.g., The measures are surely conducive to our development.
By ‘dialogic expansion’, it denotes the speaker/writer opening up dialogic space for other
external responses, e.g., The measures are possibly conducive to our development.
Furthermore, it is noted that evaluation can be either inscribed through direct realis-
ation of appraisal meaning, or invoked through indirect realisation, as evaluation can
be ‘directly inscribed in discourse through the use of attitudinal lexis’ (Martin & White,
2005, p. 61) and the nature of the invoked attitude is ‘subject to co-textual influences’
(Martin & White, 2005, p. 139). This study takes into consideration both inscribed and
evoked appraisal meaning with a corpus-based approach to generate recurrent patterns
of appraisal epithets within a –5/+5 window, and a close reading of the concordances.
Appraisal epithet is defined in this study as any adjective or adverb which indicates the
speaker/writer’s attitudinal view on the property of feelings, behaviours, or things, either
positive or negative, the source or the gradability of these attitudinal views.

Ideological Square Model

Ideology is a concept that is all-embracing, complex and discussed in many different aca-
demic disciplines. Among ideology theories, van Dijk’s Ideological Square Model has been
widely applied in discourse analysis (e.g., Ajiboye & Abioye, 2019; Chiang, 2010). In this
model, ideologies are defined as ‘foundational beliefs that underlie the shared social rep-
resentations of specific kinds of social groups’ (van Dijk, 2006, p. 120). Of note is that
ideology here is not inherently negative and the two keys that underpin this ideology
model are the group-based feature and the self-serving principle.
van Dijk argues that ‘a group self-schema is the core of all ideologies’ (1998, p. 129).
This salient group-based feature of ideology lies in a polarisation of in-group and out-
group, viz. Self and Other. Furthermore, ideologies operate intuitively in accord with
the self-serving principle, and ideology-driven social practices are organised in a way
that serve the best interests of Self (van Dijk, 1998, pp. 68–69). Specifically, these features
of ideology can be represented by Ideological Square Model, namely, (a) Express/empha-
sise information that is positive about Us; (b) Suppress/de-emphasise information that is
negative about Us (van Dijk, 1998, p. 267). In short, ideological discourse displays a struc-
ture of positive self-presentation.
Discourses are the vitally important social practice in the formulation of ideologies in
their social reproduction. Translation, as a discursive practice, is assumed ideology-gov-
erned, which suggests that when translators translate Chinese political discourse that
4 T. LI AND F. PAN

conveys China’s ideological stance, they, in van Dijk’s terms (2006, p. 121), ‘explain,
motivate or legitimate’ their actions as the employees and thus insiders of the Chinese gov-
ernment. Ideological Square Model is pertinent to the investigation of the variations in
China’s image in translation because the English translation of Chinese political discourse,
as an ideology-governed social practice, also reflects the ideological structure of positive
self-presentation during the translation process and finally in the English translation dis-
course. The investigation of the discursive manifestations of the English translation of
Chinese political discourse can help unveil the translators’ mediation.
Here it shall be stressed that ‘ideologies feature evaluative beliefs or opinions’ (originally
italicised) (van Dijk, 1998, p. 33). This is where Ideological Square Model shares a
common ground with Appraisal System.

Research design and data collection

Corpus design
As a basis, the Chinese-English parallel corpus of political discourse was compiled, which
consists of work reports by the National Congress of the Communist Party of China (here-
after CPC), work reports and white papers issued by the Central Chinese Government,
and their translations. All the Chinese political texts were translated by professional
Chinese translators, reviewed by native speakers of English, and finally trans-edited by
senior professional Chinese translators (Cheng, 2002, p. 195).
All the documents and their translations are downloaded from the website of the State
Council Information Office and the website of the Central Compilation and Translation
Bureau1 – two national translation institutes for the Central Chinese Government and
the Central Committee of the CPC. We collected all the data issued from the year of
2000 because this year is the time when government report, one important source of
data, was firstly delivered to the public through live TV. All in all, ninety files were col-
lected, totalling 1,469,213 Chinese characters and 1,090,850 English words.

Data collection
Data collection proceeds as follows: Firstly, six words were selected as Self-items that all
refer to China, covering ‘中国’ [China], ‘中华人民共和国’ [the People’s Republic of
China], ‘我国’ [our country], ‘我方’ [Our side], ‘中方’ [China’s side], ‘祖国’ [motherland].
Secondly, using WordSmith (6.0), all collocates ‘within the usual span of five words to
the left and right’ (Baker et al., 2013, p. 238) of the Self-items were generated in order to
narrow down the appraisal epithets to those that closely relate to Self-items. The concor-
dance lines of Self-items were also generated for tagging of the appraisal epithets within
Appraisal System.
Thirdly, still using WordSmith (6.0), all words tagged as adjective or adverb were
retrieved from the corpus. 1,753 adjectives and adverbs were attained. In contrast to Bed-
narek (2008, p. 152) that analyses the appraisal lexis twice with a sufficiently large time
interval between the analyses, this study adopted a two-coder method with two coders
who are proficient in Appraisal System engaged in semantic tagging. A high agreement
was reached with an interrater reliability test result of 0.92.2 For disagreements between
 PERSPECTIVES 5

the two raters over tagging, other experts were consulted until consensus was reached.
These methodological considerations are consistent across all the data.
Fourthly, Excel was employed to match the list of potential appraisal epithets with col-
locates of the Self-items. The way to decide whether these collocates were appraisal
epithets or not was to ascertain whether they also occurred on the wordlist of appraisal
epithets. Lexical items that occurred twice in this new wordlist were appraisal epithets
for further investigation. These appraisal epithets were then marked within Appraisal
System and grouped accordingly.
Lastly, ParaConc, a parallel corpus software, was employed with a batch search to
retrieve all parallel concordance lines of the Self-items. All the parallel concordance
lines were then copied to the text-editing software, EmEditor, to select all the concordance
lines containing appraisal epithets identified in the previous steps. By a batch search of
collocational appraisal epithets with regular expression, all the concordances of Self-
items that contain appraisal epithets were highlighted and thus could be easily recognised.
Upon close reading of each concordance line, all these processes returned 334 appraisal
epithets, which were categorised within Appraisal System. The frequency and distribution
of these appraisal epithets are listed in Table 1.
It is of note that ‘attitude’ is different from ‘engagement’ and ‘graduation’ in polarity. If
an appraisal epithet in ‘attitude’ is an inscribed one, which means that this ‘attitude’
epithet displays a positive or negative polarity, such polarity is then regarded as the
polarity of this ‘attitude’ epithet. But if an ‘attitude’ epithet is an infused one, which
means its polarity is determined by its collocate, then the polarity of its collocate is
taken as the polarity of this ‘attitude’ epithet.
However, the polarity of an appraisal epithet in ‘engagement’ or ‘graduation’ hinges on
the polarity of its collocate. So if its collocate is an inscribed lexical item, then the polarity
of this appraisal epithet is the polarity of its collocate. If its collocate is an infused one, the

Table 1. Frequency of appraisal epithets in Chinese political discourse.

Appraisal System China
Engagement Contraction Disclaim Positive 65
negative 121
Proclaim Positive 98
negative 5
Expansion Entertain Positive 214
negative 8
Attribute Positive 0
negative 0
Attitude Affect Positive 2
negative 0
Judgement Positive 877
negative 18
Appreciation Positive 1129
negative 108
Graduation Force up-scale Positive 1877
negative 138
down-scale Positive 42
negative 34
Focus up-scale Positive 82
negative 1
down-scale Positive 49
negative 7
6 T. LI AND F. PAN

polarity of the appraisal epithet is determined by the whole semantic effect projected by
the appraisal epithet and its collocate. For example, ‘解决[solve]’ often co-occurs with
lexical items with negative meaning, such as ‘问题[problem]’, and thus is traditionally
considered as having negative semantic prosody. But it is our belief that ‘problem’ is
‘solved’ and thus projects a positive semantic effect. So ‘大力[vigorously]’ in ‘大力解决
问题’ is categorised as an appraisal epithet in ‘graduation’ with positive polarity.

Results
Translation of appraisal epithets in Chinese political discourse
Based on close reading of the parallel concordance lines of the appraisal epithets, three
types of translation strategies were identified: equivalent translation, zero translation,
and shifting translation. Equivalent translation means that an equivalent for a certain
appraisal epithet is provided which also produces the same functional effect in the
target text (hereafter TT). Zero translation means that there is no corresponding linguistic
unit in the TT for the appraisal epithet in the source text (hereafter ST).
In terms of shifting translation, there are three sub-types. The first type is that TT
provides a shifted lexical item, which is not considered as equivalent to the appraisal
epithet in the ST, yet leads to the same functional effect. The second sub-type of shifting
translation refers to translation in which an appraisal epithet in the ST is substituted
with a lexical item in the TT that upgrades the degree of the appraisal meaning in
the ST. It is thus coded as up-shifting translation. The third sub-type of shifting trans-
lation is the reversed version of up-shifting translation, which means that a lexical item
is provided in the TT to correspond with the appraisal epithet in the ST, but down-
scaling its appraisal meaning. This is called down-shifting translation. It is noted that
the first sub-type of shifting translation is merged with the strategy of equivalent trans-
lation, since both achieve an equivalent functional effect between the ST and its corre-
sponding TT.
Extracts retrieved from the parallel corpus are listed below to illustrate the use of
different translation strategies.

(1) ST
… [[中国]] 成功 地 实行 了 人口 政策, 延迟 了 世界 总人口 的 增长 …
(2) Gloss
… China has successfully implemented population policy, which delayed the
growth of the whole population of the world …
(3) TT
… China’s success in population control has retarded the expansion of the popu-
lation of the world as a whole …

As can be seen, ‘成功’ [successfully] in Extract (1) is an up-scaling ‘force’ epithet, which
functions in its context to upgrade the degree of intensification of China’s implementation
of population control policy and thus China’s contribution to the low-rate growth of
population of the world. It was shifted into ‘success’, a noun form of ‘successful’, rather
than translated into ‘successfully’. However, the meaning in the ST was conveyed in the
 PERSPECTIVES 7

TT that China’s population control is a success, which indicates that an equivalent effect
was achieved in the TT.

(1) ST
… [[中国]] 不 称霸, 不 参加 军事 集团, 不 谋求 势力 范围 …
(2) Gloss
… China will not seek hegemony, nor will it join any military bloc or seek for any
sphere of influence …
(3) TT
… China will never seek hegemony, nor will it join any military bloc or crave for
any sphere of influence …

‘不’ [not] in Extract (2) is tagged as ‘deny-disclaim-contraction-engagement’ and it is

dealt with by the translator using the up-shifting translation strategy, where ‘不称霸’
[not seek hegemony] was rendered into ‘never seek hegemony’. Such translation strategy
is affirmed if it is compared with the translation of ‘不’ in the parallel concordance lines
‘[[中国]]不会与任何国家进行军备竞赛,不会对任何国家构成军事威胁’ [China will
not engage in any arms race or pose a military threat to any other country], where the
strategy of equivalent translation is adopted. Though similar to Extract (2), ‘不’ here in
this parallel concordance line is translated into ‘no’ instead of a superlative form of nega-
tivity ‘never’, which means ‘not at any time’. By upgrading the degree of negativity in the
TT, the translators reduced the chance for dialogistical interaction.

(1) ST
… [[中国]] 地方 政府 网站 普遍 设立 了 市长 信箱, 县长 信箱 等, 接受 民众
的 来信 …
(2) Gloss
… websites of the local governments in China generally have a municipal mayor’s
mailbox or county head’s mailbox to receive letters from the public …
(3) TT
… Many local government websites in China have a municipal mayor’s mailbox or
county head’s mailbox to receive letters from the public …

Extract (3) is retrieved to illustrate the down-shifting translation strategy. ‘普遍’ [gen-
erally] is a ‘force’ epithet which up-scales the intensification of the positive description of
China’s act to establish an interactive web platform between local governments and the
public. It was translated into ‘many’ – a better choice would be ‘most’ – which in a
sense indicates that China’s initiation is discursively presented in a more downgraded
manner.

(1) ST
… [[中国]] 坚决 反对 一切 形式 的 恐怖主义, 分裂主义 和 极端主义 …
(2) Gloss
… China resolutely opposes all forms of terrorism, separatism and extremism …
(3) TT
… China opposes all forms of terrorism, separatism and extremism …
8 T. LI AND F. PAN

In Extract (4), the positive judgment epithet to appraise China ‘坚决’ [resolutely] was
not re-expressed in the TT. The translator’s choice of zero translation brings in an effect
that China’s determination in the ST to oppose the so-called three evils in all their mani-
festations, which is positively highlighted by using ‘坚决’, is toned down in the TT.

Translation of ‘attitude’ epithets

As previously mentioned, there are three sub-categories in the Appraisal subsystem of
‘attitude’: ‘affect’, ‘judgement’, and ‘appreciation’. Table 2 illustrates the results of the
translation of appraisal epithets within each sub-category of the subsystem of ‘attitude’.
It can be clearly seen in Table 2 that there are only two appraisal epithets in ‘affect’, and
they are translated into English with the strategy of equivalent translation. Similarly, the
majority of appraisal epithets in both ‘judgement’ and ‘appreciation’ are equivalently
translated, amounting to 91% and 92%, respectively. This indicates that the most fre-
quently used translation strategy is equivalent translation. However, it can also be seen
that translation shifts still exist, particularly in terms of zero translation. And more inter-
estingly, zero translation is much more often adopted when positive ‘attitude’ epithets are
translated.

Translation of ‘engagement’ epithets

As previously discussed, the Appraisal subsystem of ‘engagement’ covers both ‘monogloss’
and ‘heterogloss’. Because ‘heterogloss’ is more representative in relation to value pos-
itions, and more variously conveyed through linguistic devices, this type of ‘engagement’
epithet is chosen for detailed analysis. Table 3 presents the data relating to the translation
of the appraisal epithets in the subsystem of ‘engagement’ according to translation strategy
and dialogical openness (‘expansion’ vs. ‘contraction’).
Table 3 clearly shows that equivalent translation is the most frequently used translation
strategy for the appraisal epithets in both sub-categories of ‘contraction’ and ‘expansion’,
amounting to 81% and 99% respectively. It is also clear that all nine cases of up-shifting
translation strategy are applied to the negative epithets in ‘contraction’, while all four cases
of down-shifting translation strategy are used for the positive epithets in ‘contraction’.
It is also shown that more positive epithets than negative ones in both ‘contraction’ and
‘expansion’ are translated with zero translation strategy. This suggests that China is more
confident in TTs inasmuch as dialogical closeness conveyed through the contractive
epithets in the STs is removed in the TTs no matter whether it is positive or negative
about China.

Translation of ‘graduation’ epithets

As ‘graduation’ implies, it deals with the gradability of appraisal meaning in relation to
‘force’ or ‘focus’, marked by up-scaling or down-scaling. With three factors as parameters,

Table 2. Translation of ‘attitude’ epithet.

Translation Equivalent T Up-shifting T Down-shifting T Zero T
Polarity Pos Neg Pos Neg Pos Neg Pos Neg
Affect 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Judgement 796 18 6 0 3 0 72 0
Appreciation 1036 105 1 0 0 0 92 3
 PERSPECTIVES 9

Table 3. Translation of ‘engagement’ epithets.

Down-shifting
Translation Equivalent T Up-shifting T T Zero T
Polarity Dialogical Openness Pos Neg Pos Neg Pos Neg Pos Neg
Contraction 129 106 0 9 4 0 30 11
Expansion 211 8 0 0 0 0 3 0

namely, translation strategies, polarity of the epithets, and the sub-categories of up-scaling
and down-scaling, Tables 4 and 5 present the data relating to the translation of ‘force’
epithets and ‘focus’ epithets.
Table 4 displays three features of the translation of ‘force’ epithets. Firstly, compared
with other translation strategies, equivalent translation is the most frequently used one,
totalling 89% in the up-scaling ‘force’ epithets and 74% in the down-scaling ‘force’
epithets. Secondly, there are more cases of up-scaling ‘force’ epithets than of down-
scaling ones in relation to each translation strategy. Thirdly, the frequency of positive
‘force’ epithets is larger than that of their negative counterparts in all categories.
Compared with ‘force’ epithets, the number of ‘focus’ epithets is rather smaller. But
similarly, the frequency of equivalent translation strategy also accounts for a larger
share in both up-scaling and down-scaling sub-categories, totalling 83% and 73% respect-
ively. Another similarity is that there are more positive epithets than negative ones in both
equivalent translation and zero translation.

Discursive representation of China in English translation

By making different choices among the meaning reservoir in the process of translation, the
translators of Chinese political discourse adopt different linguistic forms to represent
different appraisal meanings, consciously or unconsciously, projecting a different image
of China via translation.
Here a classification is made in relation to these variations in China’s image: image
equalled, image upgraded and image downgraded. Of note is that the variations in
China’s image originate from the combined effects of the translation of all the appraisal
epithets in different sub-categories of Appraisal System.

Variations in China’s image through translating ‘attitude’ epithets

For ‘attitude’ epithets, equivalent translation is considered to achieve image equalled, no
matter whether it is applied to positive or negative epithets, and thus the frequency of
the translators’ adoption of equivalent translation is the frequency of image equalled.
As for up-shifting translation, if it is applied to the positive ‘attitude’ epithets, it is con-
sidered as image upgraded in that appraisal meaning is upgraded in a positive way in the

Table 4. Translation of ‘force’ epithets.

Translation Equivalent T Up-shifting T Down-shifting T Zero T
Polarity Scaling Pos Neg Pos Neg Pos Neg Pos Neg
Up-scaling 1682 120 16 0 14 0 165 18
Down-scaling 31 25 0 0 0 0 11 9
10 T. LI AND F. PAN

Table 5. Translation of ‘focus’ epithets.

Translation Equivalent T Up-shifting T Down-shifting T Zero T
Polarity Scaling Pos Neg Pos Neg Pos Neg Pos Neg
Up-scaling 69 0 0 0 0 0 13 1
Down-scaling 34 7 0 0 0 0 15 0

TTs so that China is higher profiled in a positive way. If up-shifting translation is applied
to negative epithets, it is regarded as image downgraded, because the negative meanings of
the appraisal epithets are up-scaled in the TTs such that China is more negatively pre-
sented compared with its image in the STs.
Down-shifting translation and zero translation produce the opposite effect. If a positive
epithet is dealt with down-shifting translation or zero translation, it means its positivity is
reduced in the TT, which leads to the functional effect that China is less highly profiled.
Thus, down-shifting translation or zero translation of a positive epithet is regarded as
image downgraded. By contrast, if down-shifting translation or zero translation is
applied to a negative epithet, the degree of negativity of China is down-scaled, which indi-
cates in a sense that China is upgraded in a positive way. Down-shifting translation or zero
translation of a negative epithet is thus regarded as image upgraded.
The data for the variation instances in China’s image are recalculated accordingly, as
shown in Table 6.
The data relating to variations in China’s image in ‘attitude’ will be further analysed
below, alongside the data in the other two sub-systems.

Variations in China’s image through translating ‘engagement’ epithets

Translation of ‘engagement’ epithets conveys the speaker/writer’s tolerance for other
potential stance. But such translation shifts do not explicitly indicate a change of attitude
and a variation of national image. Of note, however, is that a sub-system of ‘deny’ in ‘dia-
logic contraction’ is instantiated through the use of negative linguistic forms, which to
some extent can change the attitude and stance conveyed by its co-occurring ‘attitude’
epithets. The translation of the appraisal epithets in the sub-category of ‘deny’ thus has
to be taken into account when dealing with variations in national image.
The ‘deny’ epithets are singled out and the frequency of translation strategies applied to
them are also calculated, as shown in Table 7.
As the use of equivalent translation strategy is considered to achieve image equalled, the
frequency of equivalent translation is regarded as the frequency of image equalled.
As Table 7 shows, there are nine cases of ‘deny’ epithets that are translated through up-
shifting translation strategy, and these all collocate with appraisal resources of negative
polarity. In terms of down-shifting translation strategy, there are two ‘deny’ epithets co-
occurring with positive appraisal resources. The translation of the nine ‘deny’ epithets

Table 6. Variations in China’s image through translating ‘attitude’ epithets.

Image variation Image equalled Image upgraded Image downgraded
Affect 2 0 0
Judgement 814 6 75
Appreciation 1141 4 92
 PERSPECTIVES 11

Table 7. Translation of ‘deny’ epithets.

Translation Equivalent T Up-shifting T Down-shifting T Zero T
Polarity Pos Neg Pos Neg Pos Neg Pos Neg
Deny 37 76 0 9 2 0 0 0

leads to image upgraded because the negative polarity of the co-occurring lexical items is
negated – that is, the negative polarity of their collocates is turned into positive – and the
negations are rendered into the TTs with up-shifting translation strategy, which means
that the positive appraisal meaning is upgraded in the TTs. Down-shifting translation
of the two ‘deny’ epithets that collocate with the epithets of positive polarity are also
regarded as cases of image upgraded, since the combination of ‘deny’ epithets and positive
epithets creates negative appraisal meaning, and the application of down-shifting trans-
lation strategy makes the negative appraisal meaning less negative, and thus, relatively
speaking, is upgraded in the TTs compared with the STs. Variations in China’s image
through translating ‘deny’ epithets is displayed in Table 8.
Since ‘engagement’ co-works with ‘attitude’ and ‘graduation’, the additive effect of the
translation of ‘deny’ epithets to variations in China’s image is discussed further below with
reference to the other two subsystems.

Variations in China’s image through translating ‘graduation’ epithets

For equivalent translation strategy, ‘graduation’ epithets in this category, regardless of
being positive or negative, up-scaling or down-scaling, are all considered as image
equalled.
As regards up-shifting translation, there are four situations of image variations. The
first is when a ‘graduation’ epithet is an up-scaling one and at the same time it is also a
positive one. If it is translated with up-shifting translation strategy, China’s image is
upgraded. The second is when a ‘graduation’ epithet is an up-scaling epithet but a negative
‘graduation’ epithet. If this epithet is translated with up-shifting translation strategy,
China’s image is not as positive in the TT as it is in the ST. Thus, it is considered as a
case of image downgraded. The third situation is when a ‘graduation’ epithet is a positive
epithet but at the same time a down-scaling one. If it is translated with up-shifting trans-
lation strategy, this means that China’s image is downgraded in the TT compared with the
ST, since the positivity of China is softened and its positive image moves towards the
polarity of negativity. This situation leads to image downgraded. The last situation in
terms of up-shifting translation strategy is when a ‘graduation’ epithet is a down-scaling
epithet but at the same time a negative one. Here, China’s image in the TT is upgraded
compared with the one in the ST. This situation is thus regarded as image upgraded.
Similarly, there are four situations in terms of down-shifting translation strategy and
zero translation strategy. If a ‘graduation’ epithet is a positive and up-scaling epithet
and is translated with down-shifting or zero translation strategy, the case is identified as

Table 8. Variations in China’s image in the subcategory of ‘deny’.

Image variation Image equalled Image upgraded Image downgraded
Deny 113 11 0
12 T. LI AND F. PAN

image downgraded. If a ‘graduation’ epithet is a positive but down-scaling one, the appli-
cation of down-shifting or zero translation strategy results in China’s image upgraded. If a
‘graduation’ epithet is a negative and up-scaling epithet, the use of down-shifting or zero
translation strategy also produces image upgraded. If a ‘graduation’ epithet is a negative
and down-scaling epithet, the application of down-shifting or zero translation strategy
results in image downgraded in the TT. The frequencies of image variations are calculated
accordingly.
Following the above procedures, variations in China’s image in the subsystem of
‘graduation’ are presented in Table 9.
As a conjunctive relation is projected among the three sub-categories of Appraisal
System, variations in China’s image through translation of ‘graduation’ epithets are dis-
cussed below considering Appraisal System as a whole.

Variations in China’s image through translating appraisal epithets

Based on the above analysis and recalculation of all the data in the three sub-categories of
Appraisal System, variations in China’s image through the translation of all the appraisal
epithets in the Chinese-English parallel corpus of political discourse are illustrated in
Table 10.
Table 10 shows that China’s image is in most cases equally achieved in the English
translation of Chinese political discourse. Surprisingly, the frequency of image upgraded,
however, accounts for only 2% of the total while the frequency of image downgraded totals
8% of the whole share. It suggests that the translators’ mediation contributes to a more
negative image of China projected through translation of the appraisal epithets in
Chinese political discourse. This is different from the results of Caimotto (2016), and
also opposite to Ideological Square Model.
The results above show that variations of China’s image exist in the English translation
vis-à-vis the original Chinese political discourse in terms of appraisal epithets, which evi-
denced by the discursive fact that China is more negatively presented in the TTs.

Discussion
As previously mentioned, ideology refers to ‘political or social systems of ideas, values or
prescriptions of groups or other collectivities, and have the function of organizing or legit-
imating the actions of the group’ (van Dijk, 1998, p. 3). Translation discourse, as an ideol-
ogy-governed social practice, is subject to specific ideologies, including political and social
systems of translation values in the translation community.
All the Chinese texts in the corpus are issued by top national institutions of China’s
political system and represent China’s attitudes and stance. The STs are thus in a superior
position vis-à-vis the TTs in the power relationship in translation, and the translators of
Chinese political discourse, as mentioned previously, are the institutionalised parts of the

Table 9. Variations in China’s image through translating ‘graduation’ epithets.

Image variation Image equalled Image upgraded Image downgraded
Force 1858 45 188
Focus 110 16 13
 PERSPECTIVES 13

Table 10. Variations in China’s image through translating appraisal epithets.

Image variation Appraisal Image equalled Image upgraded Image downgraded
Affect 2 0 0
Judgement 814 6 75
Appreciation 1141 4 92
Deny 113 11 0
Force 1858 45 188
Focus 110 16 13
Total 4038 82 368

Chinese government, and thus are subservient to the authoritative source authorship. As
Li and Hu (2015) state, ‘[t]his unbalanced power relationship formulates a set of rules and
professional norms for translators of Chinese political discourse, which exerts control on
those translators in translation process’.
The English TTs are largely subject to the ideological control of the Chinese-English
translation of political discourse in China, which requires English translations to be
closely matched with the STs without any arbitrary change, sometimes even including
word order. Hence, it is a fundamental and shared belief for the translators of Chinese pol-
itical discourse to be fully faithful to the STs and to reproduce the semantic information
contained in the STs. This is exemplified by the translation of appraisal epithets, with
equivalent translation strategy totalling 90%, making China’s national image in the TTs
much the same as it is in the STs.
Of note, however, is that ideology is a social representation that features groups at
macro-level, which means individual members on some dimension may not identify
with the group, and hence not share the ideology of the group (van Dijk, 1998, p. 71).
This can work as theoretical ground to account for translation shifts in the English trans-
lation of appraisal epithets in Chinese political discourse. The translation patterns of
appraisal epithets reflect that on the whole, as a group, the translators adhere to the trans-
lation rules and professional norms of the translator community of Chinese political dis-
course, thus adopting in most cases equivalent translation strategy, making China’s image
in the English translation closely matched with the one in the STs. Meanwhile, however,
not every individual translator approves the canonical guideline of ‘faithful’ yet rigid trans-
lation of Chinese political discourse, particularly in a context where more and more trans-
lators in recent years advocate to take into account the readers of the TTs and adopt a
translation strategy more in accordance with the norms of the receiving culture (e.g.,
Huang, 2015). While it is obligatory for the translators to be faithful to the STs when trans-
lating Chinese political discourse, some individual translators who do not share the ideo-
logical translation principles of Chinese political discourse might then produce translation
shifts, representing a different image of China in the TTs, i.e., discursively, a more negative
image of China, compared with that of the STs.
This negative discursive image of China in translation, however, conflicts with the ideo-
logical structure of positive self-presentation governed by the self-serving principle. It
behoves the translators to present China in a positive, if not more positive, way in the
ideology-governed English translation of Chinese political discourse. But the research
result shows that China is more negatively presented in the TTs compared with STs.
Given the fact that Chinese political documents in the corpus represent authoritative
China’s voice that requires extremely cautious translation and the translation participants
14 T. LI AND F. PAN

are top-ranked translators and editors, including native speakers of English, with pro-
fessional expertise in both Chinese and English, it is entirely implausible that they did
not notice the differences between Chinese and English in several rounds of translation
and editing processes. This conflict thus would be resolved by assuming that there are
other forces, beyond linguistic differences, behind translation process.
We propose that there are two layers of Ideological Square Model. The negative image
of China is discursively presented in the TTs within a superficial layer of Ideological
Square Model, but translation shifts and variations in China’s image mediated by the
translators, we argue, have a deeper purpose of serving China’s interests within a
deeper layer of Ideological Square Model to meet the requirement of the governing self-
serving principle. This proposal can trace its evidence from the governing principles of
China’s diplomatic policies, particularly those established by Mr. Deng Xiaoping, the
general designer of China’s Reform and Opening-up, which were followed by subsequent
generations of Chinese leaders. These principles can be summarised and are known as
‘Keep a low profile and make a contribution’. Some extracts are retrieved from the parallel
corpus to illustrate this argument.

(5) ST
… 在 中国共产党 的 领导 下, 经过 新 中国 成立 56年 来 的 探索 和 奋斗, [[中
国]] 彻底 改变 了 一穷二白 的 落后 面貌, …
(5) Gloss
… Under the leadership of the CPC, after 56-year explorations and efforts since the
founding of New China, China has completely cast off its former extremely poor
state. …
(5) TT
… Under the leadership of the CPC, after making a range of explorations and
efforts over the past 56 years since the founding of New China, China has cast off
its former state of abject poverty. …
(6) ST
… [[中国]] 全面 参与 并 推动 了 全球 经济 治理 机制 的 改革 …
(6) Gloss
… China has fully participated in and promoted the reform of the global economic
governance mechanism …
(6) TT
… China has participated in and helped push forward the reform of the global
economic governance mechanism …

In Extract (5), ‘彻底’, a ‘graduation’ epithet to upgrade China in the ST, is not rendered
into English. It is supposed to be translated in the TT as ‘completely’, ‘thoroughly’, or
‘finally’, referring to China finally improving its economic status after many years of
hard work. Similarly, ‘全面’ in Extract (6), which is supposed to be translated into
‘fully’, has not been translated. In the Corpus of Contemporary American English, ‘com-
pletely / thoroughly / finally cast off’ and ‘fully participate’ do occur and are used by native
speakers of English, as in ‘Perhaps that was what made the Times finally cast off its inertia’
and ‘Families and community members monitor the school’s accountability in relation to
educational results and they fully participate in the decision-making process’. So zero
 PERSPECTIVES 15

translation of ‘彻底’ and ‘全面’ produces a discursive fact that China is less positively pre-
sented in the TTs than it is in the STs, which implies a more negative image of China in the
TTs within the superficial layer of Ideological Square Model.
China, as is widely known, always designates itself as the largest developing country in the
world. Such a designation would lose its footing if China had finally cast off its poverty. So
the omission of ‘finally’ suggests that China potentially still faces economic problems and is
still a developing country. In this way, such a translation shift helps to ‘keep a low profile’.
In Extract (6), the translator does not express the meaning of ‘fully’, a word which in
one sense indicates China’s active role in pushing for reform of the global economic gov-
ernance mechanism, but can also be interpreted as China’s wish to seek hegemony and
leadership of a new global economic system, which to some extent supports the claims
that China is a threat to the global order. Though the omission of ‘fully’ in the TT projects
a more negative image of China compared with the ST, such a translation shift is in line
with China’s diplomatic principle of making a contribution but always keeping a low
profile. In this way, China’s interests are protected.
In a broader sense, the discursive fact of a more negative image of China in the TTs is
attributed to the translators’ aim to ultimately achieve an implicitly positive image of
China within a deeper layer of Ideological Square Model governed by the self-serving prin-
ciple. The two-layered Ideological Square Model proposed on the basis of translation data
is of particular value to imagology studies and discourse analysis.
Finally, the paper also confirms the strength of corpus-based discourse analysis
approach in translation studies. Such an approach helps reveal repeated patterns in trans-
lation discourse and analyse translation on the patterns rather than one or a few well-
chosen examples. However, other questions still remain unaddressed which require
further work, such as whether there is any significant difference between positive/negative
shifts observed between different subcategories of Appraisal System; what aspect of
China’s image undergoes more modification. This paper will also serve as a base for
other future studies, for example, to compare variations of China’s image and the
images of other countries in translation, or variations of national image in translation
from a diachronic perspective.

Notes
1. http://www.scio.gov.cn/zfbps/index.htm and http://en.theorychina.org/
2. The agreement coefficient of Gwet’s AC1 is adopted here, whereby 1 signifies absolute agree-
ment and 0.67 marks a cutting line between agreement and disagreement. So the result of
0.92 indicates a very high agreement between the two raters.

Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Prof. Kaibao Hu at Shanghai International Studies University, Prof. Yifan
Zhu and Dr. Kyung Hye Kim at Shanghai Jiao Tong University for their helpful suggestions. We
also owe great thanks to the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
16 T. LI AND F. PAN

Funding
This article is a part of the project funded by Shanghai Planning Office of Philosophy and Social
Science ‘The discursive pattern of national image in the English translation of Chinese political dis-
course’ (2017BYY009).

Notes on contributors
Tao Li is Associate Professor in translation studies at the Centre for Corpus Research, Shanghai
Ocean University. He holds a PhD in Translation Studies from Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
His research interests cover corpus-based translation studies, systemic functional linguistic
approach to the analysis of translation and interpreting, discourse analysis. He has published
articles in journals such as Discourse & Society (2020), Discourse, Context & Media (2018),
Modern Foreign Languages (2015, in Chinese).
Feng Pan is Associate Professor of interpreting and translation studies at the Department of Trans-
lation and Interpreting, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China. He holds a PhD in
Translation and Intercultural Studies from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. His academic interests
include corpus-based translation studies, discourse analysis, and conference interpreting. His work
has appeared in The Journal of Specialised Translation (2020, forthcoming), Across Languages and
Cultures (2017), Babel (2016), Foreign Language Teaching and Research (2015, in Chinese) among
others.

ORCID
Feng Pan http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4174-2233

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