| Popis: |
This corpus-based study aims to uncover differences between Chinese political documents and their official English translations regarding the portrayal of the United Nations (UN) and China’s role within it. All mentions of the UN (联合国 liánhéguó) was extracted from a corpus of 149 documents. Evaluating language regarding the UN and China’s role in the UN was identified and classified within the appraisal system. 351 appraisal epithets were identified in the Chinese corpus and compared to their respective translations. Translations were classified as either equivalent translation or one of four non-equivalent translation strategies, with regards to how the evaluation of the appraisal epithet had been transferred. Equivalent translation was the dominant translation strategy within both categories and all appraisal categories. Non-equivalent translation strategies were more common for the China category, and omission of the appraisal epithet (zero translation) was the most common non- equivalent translation strategy in the category. A downgrade in evaluation (down-shifting translation) was the most common strategy for the UN category. Since only positive evaluation was identified in the corpus, the results suggest that China’s active and positive role in the UN is downplayed in the translations, and that the evaluation of the UN is also downplayed, albeit not to the same extent. The reasons for the translation shifts identified in the study are likely to be a combination of linguistic accommodation, cultural accommodation, and ideological accommodation. The ideological reasons can be traced back to self-serving purposes of adjusting the evaluations for a domestic and international audience. |
