Li, Jing; (2024) The Role of News Translation in Building and Countering Images of China. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

Since the beginning of the 21st century, China has been promoting its media ‘Going Global’ drive with the aim of expanding its international influence. This wave of media expansion is an integral part of China’s effort to build favourable images of China and improve its soft power. In the context of international communication, translation plays an unneglectable role in information flow across borders. This thesis focuses its attention to a less visible translation of a politically critical media texts in China’s international development – state media news articles. It investigates an overarching research question: what is the role of Chinese-to-English news translation in China’s image-building in the context of the country’s international communication efforts? By examining this question, the thesis aims to deepen our understanding of how news translation processes connect with image management concerns. This thesis constructs a research framework of two parts, comprising study of both translator training and news translation products. The first part explores the basic principles to which prospective news translators are introduced when translating Chinese news and producing English-language journalistic writing, and how the latter may shape image-building effects in news reporting. To explore this aspect, the research conducts observation of a news translation course that forms part of (two) Master degree programmes in International Journalism and International Communication at a university in Beijing, which is among a project of five trial programmes of state media journalists training. In tandem of lecture observation, the lecturer is also interviewed. As in many other contexts, the practice of news translation in China is found to consist of a combination of translating, writing, and editing. These processes work together with a range of techniques to achieve communication effect of representing political attitudes. The second part investigates the news translation strategies that are evident in translated news products, focussing specifically on environmental news translations published on the official Xinhua News Agency website over a period of three years (2017-2019). This part investigates the data at both content and textual levels. Based on content analysis of 109 pairs of news, the thesis shows that the news products portray China as a country actively taking measures to address pollution issues within its border and as a cooperative country that contributes to global environmental governance. Selectivity of translation is shown to be vital to Xinhua’s efforts to build positive images of China and to present counter-images to existing negative representations in Western media. Textual analysis compares Chinese and English news articles and identifies translation patterns. This thesis finds that the most significant news translation technique lies in headline translation, the addition of news background, and selection and de-selection of particular topics or perspectives. These textual arrangements are consistent with efforts to improve credibility, highlight environmental aims, and foreground China’s achievements to date. The thesis finds that all of these techniques can reflect political stances and that they play an important role in countering and building particular images of China. From a soft power perspective, it identifies image-building model incorporating stigma management in the case of news translation by China’s state media. The model includes three sequential stages of identifying stigma, building (counter-) image and communicating image. Moreover, this thesis argues that soft power, positive images of a country and news credibility are facilitative of one another. Whilst the thesis shows that China’s international communication capacities have been greatly increased through the use of translation and English-language news writing, it questions the extent to which these efforts succeed in building positive global images of China. Though Chinese news translation training and practice both emphasise the importance of enhancing the credibility of state-produced news, they do so primarily by emphasising the need for stylistic adjustments and accommodation of what is perceived as a Western news style. However, in the case of Xinhua, even with such adjustments, the credibility of the news is potentially fundamentally undermined by the nature of the news source as an organ of Chinese state media, a fact which is often explicitly signalled on international news websites.

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