The important role of translation and interpreting (T&I), in particular the process of re-contextualisation, has remained under-explored in political discourse studies, which has âled to the assumption that information can circulate unaltered across different linguistic communities and culturesâ (Bielsa 2009: 14). According to PĂ©rez-GonzĂĄlez (2012), the reasons for such a phenomenon lie in the following two aspects: On the one hand, the tendency of global media analysts to concentrate on the advantages of the monolingual strategy adopted by powerful Anglophone media corporations (including the instantaneity in the processes of information dissemination) has âobscured the complexities involved in overcoming cultural and linguistic barriers, and made the role of translation in global communications invisibleâ (Bielsa and Bassnett 2009: 18). On the other hand, there are widespread social misconceptions about T&I which perceive T&I only as a routine and uncritical equivalence-matching process while power differentials between the parties involved in the production and negotiation of meaning are often viewed erroneously as being invariable in T&I (PĂ©rez-GonzĂĄlez 2012: 172).
Meanwhile, in the field of translation studies, a noteworthy development is the conceptualisation of T&I as socially situated activities and translators and interpreters as agents of not only linguistic and communicative mediation but also cultural and ideological mediation (e.g. Inghilleri 2003). After the emergence of the linguistic school of translation studies from the 1950s to the 1980s that centred on the concept of âequivalenceâ between the source text and the target text, there followed the âcultural turnâ in the 1990s that expanded its scope of research to include cultural aspects. In the past decade the discipline has shown increasing awareness of the need to adopt a more critical stance towards the relationship between discursive practices and their social embedding, which is labelled by some scholars as the âsocial turnâ (e.g. Wolf 2006; Angelelli 2012), and particularly the role of power in discursive practice, which is proposed by Tymoczko and Gentzler (2002) as the âpower turnâ. Such a perspective is also articulated by Baker (2006: 322), who argues that
it is far more productive to examine contextualisation as a dynamic process of negotiation and one that is constrained by the uneven distribution of power which characterizes all exchanges in society, including those that are mediated by translators and interpreters.
While the cultural turn and the social turn have successfully expanded the horizon of translation studies from linguistic analysis at the micro-level to socio-cultural and ideological analysis at the macro-level, the following issues remain to be further explored: (1) How may micro-analysis be linked to macro-analysis of the context, to the role of translators and interpreters and to the function of T&I in society and international communication? 2) How may socio-cultural studies be better validated with linguistic, textual and discourse analysis? A notable recent development in translation studies is the effort to link linguistic and discourse analysis with socio-cultural and ideological interpretations, which is represented by the special issue of the Target journal on âdiscourse analysis in translation studiesâ (Munday and Zhang 2015). Translation âpresents a fertile research area for comparative or multilingual Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)â (Al-Hejin 2012: 312). Chilton (2004: xii) has already alluded to that potential, stating that translation âpose[s] more intriguing, and politically urgent, challenges for scholars in a world that is both more global and more fragmentedâ. As SchĂ€ffner (2004: 145) also suggests, translations can function as part of wider strategic functions of political language, which she identifies as: coercion, resistance, dissimulation and (de)legitimation. CDA, whose explicit aim is to âmake the ideological loading of particular ways of using language and the relations of power which underlie them more visibleâ (Wodak and Fairclough 1997: 258), may provide a better understanding of the translation of ideology by elucidating the way discourse shapes and is shaped by ideology (Hatim and Mason 1997: 119).
Most political discourse research has been conducted from the perspectives of political science, communication studies, rhetoric studies, pragmatics, socio-linguistics and discourse analysis. While useful research findings have been produced from those perspectives, the understanding of translated/interpreted political discourse is quite limited because an important factor has often been neglected: the role of translators and interpreters as âunknown agents in translated political discourseâ (SchĂ€ffner 2004, 2012) and in re-contextualising political discourse for international audiences.
As seen from the perspective of interpreting and translation studies, the presentation, re-presentation and perception of political discourse is not only a site for interlingual, cross-cultural and international communication but also a venue for re-contextualisation and manipulation of values, power and ideology.
This chapter will examine how Chinese political concepts presented by the Chinese government are re-contextualized in English with the presentation, representation and perception of the discourse on the âBelt and Roadâ. The Belt and Road is a grand scheme initially proposed by President Xi Jinping of China in late 2013 to revive the Silk Road on both land and sea, which is not only central in Chinaâs development agenda and promotion of its influence and soft power but also relevant to many other countries in Asia, Europe and Africa. The Belt and Road has become a core concept in Chinaâs political and economic agenda during the past few years. As it involves huge investment of billions of dollars and lots of development projects along the routes of the Belt and Road, it is also meaningful to many other countries. However, it seems that the process of international communication about its concepts and implementation plans has not been an easy one. For example, CNN in the United States asked in the title of its news report about âOne Belt and One Roadâ in 2017: âJust what is the One Belt, One Road thing anyway?â.1 The Xinhua News Agency in China also asked in 2015: âWill poor translation mislead Chinaâs Silk Road initiative?â2 Both point to the confusion over the core concepts about the Belt and Road in their re-presentation and perception in international communication.
Therefore, it will be interesting to examine how the Belt and Road is presented in the original Chinese discourse, re-presented in English translation and perceived by Western media. It will also be interesting to see whether and how the perceptions by Western media have changed during the past few years. In this chapter, two sets of research questions will be explored as follows: (a) How is the B&R labelled in the Chinese governmentâs presented discourse and its represented discourse through institutional translation? How is it labelled in the perceived discourse by English media? (b) Is the image of the B&R constructed in the perceived discourse the same as in the re-presented discourse? If different, how is the image of the B&R constructed differently in the perceived discourse with discoursal resources?
