De la diversitat a l’odi contra Catalunya

Following the above review of translation studies of political discourse, it can be noted that the ongoing translation practices in non-Western contexts are strikingly under-addressed. In order to gain a balanced understanding of the research background it is therefore of great importance to look into this issue in the Chinese scholarly context. There are mainly two strands of research on political translation in China. The first is generally attributed to official or professional Chinese translators who have been extensively involved in translating and interpreting practices in the political domain. Given this situation, their work is primarily based on the experience and knowledge that they have accumulated in the involvement of the institutional operation of political translation. The focus is mainly on identifying the factors that govern the translation behaviour by pinpointing instances that could illustrate both the decision making process and the considerations behind translation products.

The majority of this kind of research focuses on the exploration of pragmatic criteria for political translations and subsequent strategies to meet them (Cheng 2002; 2004; Huang 2004; Wang 2002). Earlier critique was largely based on the experience accumulated in translating ‘Mao’s Selected Works’ which has been favourably received in the English-speaking world and domestically considered as a classic of Chinese political translations (Fei 2000: 50). It was almost universally emphasised that accuracy is the overriding institutional norm governing the translation of political texts. It manifests itself most importantly in the faithful rendering of political connotations in the STs tailored to various political settings (Xu 2000; Cheng 2002; 2004; Guo 2002; 2005; Wang 2002; Shi 2004; Yuan 2005; Sun and Yang 2006; Lu 2008). As Cheng (2002: 110-11) points out, political awareness is crucial for translating political texts in any country with any political system because it is where a country’s basic interests reside. Secondly, translations should resemble the originals in terms of forms and styles (Cheng 2002; 2004; Wang 2002; Lu 2002; Yuan 2005; Lu 2008).

In recent years, the agenda for political translation has been innovated to adjust to the needs of international political communication. A new principle of ‘Three Accommodates’ has been announced to guide the translation practice at the macro level, which is expressed as ‘accommodate the situations in China, accommodate needs of foreign receptors in terms of their information acquisition, accommodate the thinking patterns of foreign receptors’ (Huang 2004: 27). Under this guidance, some translation practitioners have raised refreshing points in this field. Huang (2004) states that translators should further take into account cultural and linguistic differences and try to bridge the cultural gaps in translation.

Zhang (2004) points out the bureaucratic tone which hinders the reception of the TTs amongst target audience. This prevailing phenomenon in political translation partly results from the strategy of ‘playing safe’ because of the partial understanding of the

‘accuracy’ principle by merely rendering the ideational meanings (the experiential level of discourse to reflect social reality) and disregarding the interpersonal dimension of the original speeches. Thus Zhang calls for the reinterpretation of the ‘accuracy’ principle and special attention paid to the multi-functionality of political leaders’ speeches as well as the stylistic elements of the speeches. These findings shed new light on a fuller comprehension of the original Chinese speeches where style variations may be involved. This may pose further challenges to the translators and translation analysts as stylistic issues need to be duly considered in translation and to be adequately revealed in the analysis of political translations.

As another attempt to enhance TT reception, Tu (2005) proposes that political translation should be in a better informed position to adapt to the changes of global discursive context and to make special political terminologies more accessible to the target audience.

Another strand of research is undertaken largely by translation analysts who attempt to explore the practice of political translation in China by drawing on the Western translation theories. Fu (2001) and Wang (2008) emphasise the importance of a textually-oriented approach to translating political documents from Chinese to English with translators fully aware of the structural and textual differences between the two languages. Manipulation of the information will be needed for the STs to fit textual norms of the TT. According to Wang (2008), special attention should also be paid to establish deep semantic cohesion in the TT to facilitate target readership. This article thus reinforces the validity of this study in which the textual approach to political discourse study remains an effective vehicle to investigate the characteristics and changes of Chinese political translation underpinned by the overall discursive transformations.

From a functionalist perspective, Jia and Teng (2007) investigate the translation strategies of diplomatic documents. Postulated as one of the most important

functionalist approaches, Vermeer’s (1978) Skopos theory serves as the theoretical foundation of the article. The entire analysis is developed around the three general rules stipulated by the theory, i.e. the Skopos rule, coherence rule and fidelity rule. As argued, the purpose of translation is determined by the reception of TTs amongst target audience, therefore the lingering issue of equivalence between ST and TT has become the compatibility between the purpose of translation and target reception.

This line of argument is particularly insightful to the analysis of political translation products which may seem as tangible outcome of the power balance between the purpose of translation initiated from the source context and the reception standard oriented in the target context. However, this work appears to be partly discredited by the partial integration of Venuti’s domesticating and foreignising strategies into the analysis of political translation. Without adequate awareness of the conditions under which these strategies operate, they jump to the conclusion that domesticating strategy mainly functions at the cultural level while foreignising strategy functions at the linguistic level. As pointed out by Venuti (2005: 243), a detailed reconstruction of the cultural formation in which a translation is produced and consumed is necessary to determine whether domesticating or foreignising strategy is involved, and ‘what is domestic or foreign can be defined only with reference to the changing hierarchy of values in the target-language culture’. The ‘target-language’ referred to by Venuti is exclusively the translators’ mother tongue into which the original foreign text is translated, which is the opposite case in Chinese political translation. In this sense, the application of domesticating and foreignising strategies into the political translation in China is largely at issue.

More practically oriented, Yu (2008) claims that diplomatic translation is different from other kinds of translation because of its unique properties including political sensitiveness, topicality and binding institutional constraints. Based on the three general rules of Vermeer’s Skopos theory she identifies three important factors governing the selection of translation strategies for Chinese political translation,

which are translators’ intention, acceptability of translations and cultural specificities. This article offers practical guidance on this study, as these three factors may serve as key criteria to evaluate the textual products and consider their socio-political significations within a certain context.

Wang (2007) constructs the analytical framework using Toury’s (1995) notion of norms based on the translation critiques contributed by Cheng (2002; 2004). As stated, Cheng indicates that political translation in China is more inclined to identify with the norm of ‘adequacy’ which places emphasis on the values in the source culture, but he also pays due attention to the norm of ‘acceptability’ which attends to the needs of the target audience. Wang argues that this view is not only shaped by ideological factors underlying the translation behaviour in a general sense, but also determined by the directionality of translation. It is because political translation in China is a kind of translation into a non-mother tongue commonly known as ‘inverse translation’ that is largely marginalised by the mainstream ‘into mother tongue’ translation behaviours.

This point is reiterated by Huang (2005) who argues against the view that ‘translation into a non-mother tongue’ is not a wise choice’ (ibid: 31) and argues with the aid of statistics that a multitude of translations into foreign languages have to be undertaken by Chinese translators due to the highly limited number of competent translators who are able to translate Chinese into their mother tongue. This line of thought is especially illuminating to give credit to the majority of translational practices taking place in China and lay a pragmatic foundation for a more profound analysis of Chinese-English political translation.