Ideological positioning in news translation

A case study of evaluative resources

in reports on China

Li Pan
Guangdong University of Foreign Studies

This article investigates the Chinese translations of several English news reports
on China’s human rights issue carried in Reference News, a Chinese authorita-
tive state-run newspaper devoted to translating foreign reports for the Chinese
reader, and aims to establish how evaluative resources are resorted to by the
translators to facilitate ideologically different positioning in presenting events
and identifying participants in the translated news. The translations are com-
pared with their English source texts using Appraisal Theory (Martin and White
2005) as the micro analytical framework and Fairclough’s (1995a, 1995b) three-
dimension model of Critical Discourse Analysis as the explanatory framework.

Keywords: news translation, ideology, positioning, evaluative resources, reports

on China

1. Introduction

Though objectivity is advocated as the golden principle of journalism, a number of

studies of media discourse employing the approach of Critical Discourse Analysis
(CDA) have demonstrated that distinct ideological positioning can be discerned
in reports on the same event in different news outlets (see Trew 1979; Fowler 1991;
Fairclough 1992, 1995a, 1995b; van Dijk 1995; Fang 2001). The same happens to
news translation, in which being faithful to the original is advocated and expect-
ed, but not followed in actual practice. While CDA has been widely applied to
the study of ideological manipulation in monolingual discourse (e.g., van Dijk
1988a, 1988b; Wodak 1989; Fairclough 1995a, 1995b; Wodak and Meyer 2001) or
in bilingual comparison (e.g., Puurtinen 2000), few CDA-oriented studies have ex-
plored ideological conflict in journalistic translation, and still fewer have focused

Target 27:2 (2015), 215–237.  doi 10.1075/target.27.2.03pan

issn 0924–1884 / e-issn 1569–9986 © John Benjamins Publishing Company
216 Li Pan

on the ways in which evaluative resources are deployed to facilitate ideological

positioning in news translation.
Drawing on Fairclough’s three-dimension CDA model (1995a, 1995b) and the
graduation system from Appraisal Theory (AT) (Martin and White 2005), this ar-
ticle investigates the Chinese translations of several English reports on two events
related to China’s human rights issue. The translations are from Reference News
(参考消息, in Pingyin Cankao Xiaoxi, hereafter RN), a major official Chinese
newspaper which claims its translation is “faithful to the original” and has the
largest daily circulation in China. The newspaper is also renowned for its long
tradition, for several decades serving as the authoritative information source
for Chinese leaders regarding international events and other countries’ views of
China. In comparing RN’s translations with the source reports, the article aims to
establish how linguistic resources are deployed by the Chinese translators of the
English reports to construct distinct ideological positioning. It then explores the
institutional and social factors that could be responsible for the possible mediation
within the claimed “faithful translations.”

2. Ideology and Critical Discourse Analysis

The concept of ideology has been subject to much debate (Conboy 2007, 104),
having been understood in different ways by scholars from different fields (see
Thompson 1990 and Solin 1995 for criticism of the concept). Differences in under-
standing exist even within the field of media analysis (see summary in Devereux
2007), ranging from the Marxist tradition of “false consciousness” to Thompson’s
“ways in which meaning (or signification) serves to sustain relations of domina-
tion” (1984, 146). Thompson’s definition is regarded as “probably the single most
widely accepted definition of ideology” (Eagleton 1991, 5), and is adopted here.
Ideology has been the major concern of CDA for the past thirty years, and
media discourse, especially news reports, is a frequent subject (see, e.g., van Dijk
1988a, 1988b, 1995; Fowler 1991; Fairclough 1992, 1995a, 1995b, 2006). In CDA,
discourse analysis is carried out to reveal the relationships between language
use and the social relations and processes in which language use is “imbricated”
(Fairclough 1995b, 73). Fairclough proposes a three-dimension CDA model. In
the model any communicative event can be analyzed on three dimensions for the
ways in which values and power relations are encoded in texts. They are the di-
mensions of text, discourse practice, and socio-cultural practice (see the left part
of Figure 1).
The term text is used for “both written texts and transcriptions of spoken in-
teraction” (Fairclough 1993, 166). More specifically, it refers to “the product of the
 Ideological positioning in news translation 217

Description
process of production (text analysis)

text
Interpretation
(processing analysis)
process of interpretation

discourse practice
Explanation
(social analysis)
sociocultural practice

Figure 1.  Fairclough’s three-dimension analytical model (adapted from Titscher et al.

2000, 153)

process of text-creation” (ibid.). As a key notion in CDA, discourse is considered

“more informative and relevant” (Fairclough 1989, 24) than the term ‘text,’ since
a discourse is a “whole process of social interaction of which text is just a part”
(ibid.). However, text is the starting point of any analysis in CDA. On the one
hand, the text, as a product of a discourse process, consists of traces of a produc-
tion process. On the other hand, from the position of the person decoding it, it is a
resource consisting of clues for interpretation processes. As indicated in Figure 1,
text is embedded within discourse practice, which itself is embedded in socio-
cultural practice.
In Fairclough’s analytical model, discourse analysis is carried out in three
procedures: description, interpretation and explanation (see the right part of
Figure 1). That is to say, linguistic properties are described in text analysis first.
The relationship between the text and the productive and interpretative processes
of discursive practice is then interpreted in processing analysis, and last but not
least the relationship between discursive and social practice is explained in social
analysis (Fairclough 1995b, 97).

3. Ideological positioning, the language of evaluation, and evaluation in

translation

Ideological positioning is considered decisive for certain interpretation of a text.

According to CDA, such positioning is realized through clues in the text. In
Fairclough’s words, “texts do not typically spout ideology. They so position the
interpreter through their clues that she brings ideologies to the interpretation of
texts” (1989, 71). In line with Fairclough’s view of ideological positioning, White
asserts that news reporting is “a value laden, ideologically determined discourse”
218 Li Pan

which potentially positions the media audience (2006, 37). In news discourse,
evaluative resources play a crucial part in transmitting ideological values and con-
struing ideological positioning. In White’s words, evaluation is a key aspect of “this
ideological functionality” in that news reporting performs the “ideological func-
tion of endorsing, perpetuating and making seem natural particular systems of
value and belief ” while maintaining its claim to be impartial and objective (ibid.).
Through resources of evaluation in media discourse, the audience is positioned in
their interpretation to “take either negative or positive views of the participants,
actions, happenings and state-of-affairs therein depicted” (ibid.).
Resources of evaluation have so far been most fully depicted in AT, a theory
recognized as the “most concise approach to evaluative language as a tool of inter-
personal positioning” (Lauerbach 2007). The theory, developed from the study of
interpersonal resources in Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (1994), pro-
vides researchers with a “systematic, detailed and elaborate framework of evalu-
ative language” (Bednarek 2006, 32). In AT, evaluative resources are described as
a system of appraisal consisting of three sub-systems, namely the systems of atti-
tude, graduation and engagement. The subsystem of graduation is considered cen-
tral to the whole system of appraisal (Martin and White 2005, 136). It is through
graduation that values of attitudinal resources “construe greater or lesser degrees
of positivity or negativity” and values of resources of engagement “scale for the
degree of the text producer’s investments in the utterance” (135). Semantic values
of evaluative expressions in graduation are described as two subsystems of gradu-
ation in AT (54): force and focus. Force covers those values that scale according to
intensity (termed intensification, e.g., slightly foolish, extremely foolish) and amount
(termed quantification, e.g., many countries, a few countries). It contains the up-
scaling and downscaling directions. Focus covers those values that scale accord-
ing to prototypicality and preciseness, in which graduation operates to construe
categories, constructing core and peripheral types of things. It has the directions
of sharpening or softening, depending on moving the specification to prototypical-
ity (e.g., a real father, a true friend) or to having a marginal membership in the
category (e.g., an apology of sorts).
AT’s depiction of the graduation system is enlightening for scholars who
are interested in examining how distinct ideological positioning is accommo-
dated in translation. While evaluation is generally not easy to challenge in dis-
course, and quite effective in manipulating the reader, evaluation with graduation
changes in translation is subtle and difficult to detect without careful compari-
son. Additionally, graduation is important in construing writer-reader solidarity
(Martin and White 2005, 139). Since it came into being in 1990s, AT has been
regularly applied to the study of ideological position and stance in monolingual
media discourse, both in English and Chinese (e.g., Iedema, Feez and White 1994;
 Ideological positioning in news translation 219

White 1998, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2006; Wang 2004; Lassen 2006). However, there is
still a lack of sufficient research applying the framework to the study of evaluation
in translation. Early studies on subjective aspects such as ideological and evalua-
tive meanings in translation can be found in work by Hatim and Mason (1990),
which incorporates the notions of ideology and culture into the analysis of trans-
lation, and Hatim and Mason (1997), which gives “one of the most explicit state-
ments about ideology from a critical linguistic and discourse analysis perspective”
in translation studies (Munday 2007, 199). Hatim (1997, 113–21) goes further and
incorporates Fowler’s (1985) model of critical linguistics with the early proposals
on evaluative resources by Martin (1985) to form “a text-linguistic model of evalu-
ative texture” (Munday 2007, 199) with data from news papers. Yet for analysis of
the realization of the interpersonal meanings, both Hatim and Mason (1990) and
Hatim (1997) mainly consider shifts in modality in translation. While evaluation
is an important feature of language (Thompson and Huston 2000) and can hardly
be avoided in translation, as a whole, evaluative meanings have been insufficiently
researched in Translation Studies, most likely due to the lack of a reliable model
for analyzing this subjective and interpersonal aspect in translated discourse.

4. An analytical model for evaluation and positioning in news translation

Evaluation and ideological positioning are terms suggesting the subjective use of
language. In order to carry out a comprehensive analysis of this subjective aspect in
news discourse, a tentative model is established, incorporating Fairclough’s three-
dimension CDA model and graduation system in AT. As illustrated in Figure 2, it
starts with the examination of the ways in which evaluative resources are deployed
by news translators to accommodate values and ideological positioning distinct
from the original text. It will then explore the institutional and social factors re-
sponsible for the relevant mediation in the translation. The solid arrows indicate
the conditioning relationships between the dimensions, and the broken arrows
show the direction of analysis.
Description through text analysis, taken as the starting point of the whole
analysis, focuses on the linguistic resources of evaluation at the lexico-grammar
level. In this step, deviations are identified and described with a comparative
analysis of the evaluative meanings in the source text (ST) and target text (TT),
with the aid of the graduation system in Appraisal Theory. Findings from the first
step are then interpreted with processing analysis in the second step, in which the
processes of producing and interpreting news and translated news are analyzed
to interpret the textual features evidenced in the textual analysis. It is followed by
explanation in the third step, which seeks possible explanations from the social
220 Li Pan

Ideology
(sociocultural practice) Explanation
3 (social analysis)

Positioning
(discourse practice)
Interpretation
2
(processing analysis)
Semantics of evaluation
(Appraisal System)

1 Description
Lexicogrammar (text analysis)
(evaluative resources)

Figure 2.  Analytical model of evaluation and positioning in news translation

analysis of ideological contexts in which the news reports and their translations
respectively function.
From the perspective of CDA, news translation can be regarded as a media
communicative discourse practice, consisting of both interpretive and productive
processes. For the new text producer, evaluative resources are indispensable for
certain ideological positioning. They are also the clues the reader depends on to
interpret events represented in the news text. Following the analytical model in-
troduced above, some Chinese translated and English source reports are analyzed
below, with an aim to explore how and why evaluative resources are deployed by
the translator in constructing distinct positioning in news translation.

5. Text analysis: Evaluation deviations in the translated reports

The samples to be analyzed are two sets of Chinese translated and English source
reports of events related to China’s human rights record. One set of source texts
and target texts is on the UN Human Rights Council’s review of China’s human
rights report. The English originals for this set were collected from the websites of
the BBC, Reuters and The Washington Post (WP). The other set is about the then
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s being attacked by a protester with a shoe during
his speech in Cambridge. The English source texts were published respectively
at the websites of The Associated Press (AP) and WP (URLs given in references).
It should be noted that each of the two translated reports by RN includes several
parts, translated from different foreign news reports. The analysis here only con-
siders the parts translated from English.
 Ideological positioning in news translation 221

The text analysis focuses on the evaluation deviations identified from the com-
parative analysis of the source and translated texts. The term evaluation devia-
tion refers to a linguistic resource in the target text differing in evaluative mean-
ings from its counterpart in the source text (Pan 2012). The evaluation deviations
in representing the reported events are classified into three types: deviations in
identifying news actors, in presenting news events and in dissimulating the rep-
resentations (see 5.1–3 for elaboration). Such a classification relates the evaluative
resources in the source and target texts to their function of representing ‘reality’ as
narrated in the news stories, since news actors and news actions or events are the
core elements in a news discourse (Bell 1998). Each type will be illustrated with
examples from the sample texts.

5.1 Deviations in identifying news actors

News actors in a report, just like participants in a process within a clause (see
clause as representation in Halliday 1994, 106–107), are among basic components
when representing the happenings, and the ways of identifying them are often
subject have changes in translations (Pan 2010b; Puurtinen 2007). The deviations
often have ideological implications and construe distinct positioning in the trans-
lated texts. The following two examples are cases in point. They illustrate how the
differences in identifying news actors result in evaluation deviations in terms of
graduation. All examples list the ST first, then the TT, followed by a back transla-
tion (BT):
(1) ST: Chen Shiqiu, who has served as a Chinese government-appointed adviser
to U.N. groups looking into the promotion and protection of human rights,
agreed that the fact that China submitted a report at all is a big step.
(WP, Feb. 9, 2009)
TT: 联合国 人权理事会 咨询委员会 专家 陈士球
U.N. Human Rights Council Advisory Committee’s expert Chen Shiqiu
认为, 中国 递交 人权报告 这一事实 便是
suggested China submitting human rights report this fact is
向前 迈出的一大步。
forward making a big step (RN, Feb. 11, 2009)
BT: Chen Shiqiu, an expert from the Advisory Committee of U.N. Human
Rights Council, suggested that the fact that China submitted a report at
all is a big step.

In (1), the ST introduces Chen Shiqiu, the source of a positive comment on

China’s human rights situation, as a Chinese government-appointed adviser to U.N.
groups looking into the promotion and protection of human rights. Emphasizing his
222 Li Pan

serving as a Chinese government-appointed adviser, it tends to position the poten-

tial English readers to reserve their opinions towards this positive comment on
China’s human rights situation. The TT refers to Chen Shiqiu as an expert from the
Advisory Committee of U.N. Human Rights Council instead. The translation is an
instance of up-scaled deviation in force of graduation, presenting Chen Shiqiu as
someone no longer standing for the Chinese government but representing the U.N
Human Rights Council. The authority of his comment is raised together with that
of his status in relation to human rights as an expert as well as his affiliation to the
Advisory Committee of U.N. Human Rights Council. This rendering is likely to lead
the Chinese reader to have a positive, rather than reserved, response to his praise
of China’s human rights performance.
However, the source is introduced less specifically in the TT in another com-
ment regarding China’s human rights performance, as found in the follow extract
from the sample news.
(2) ST: Pu Zhiqiang, a human rights lawyer in Beijing, said China’s human
rights performance should be looked at in historical context. (WP, Feb.
9, 2009)
TT: 北京 一名律师 也 说, 中国 在 人权领域的
In Beijing a lawyer also said China in human rights area’s
表现 应 被 放入 历史背景中 加以审视。
performance should be put in historical context to look at (RN, Feb.
11, 2009)
BT: A lawyer in Beijing also said China’s human rights performance should
be looked at in historical context.

While the ST attributes the comment to a very specific source, indicating both
his full name, Pu Zhiqiang and his specific occupation, a human rights lawyer, the
Chinese text just gives his broad occupation (a lawyer) and omits his name. The
change gives rise to an instance of deviation of softening focus, in which a specific
occupation and full name is replaced with a generic class. Such adjustment has, to
some extent, ideological implications, in the sense that the rendering attributes the
comment to a lawyer rather than a lawyer in the field of human rights, a field rarely
mentioned in Chinese media.

5.2 Deviations in presenting news events

News events, when narrated in reports, like the processes themselves (see Halliday
1994, 108–44), are presented as various processes in their circumstances (here cir-
cumstances include elements such as the manners, causes, time and space of the
events as in Halliday 1994, 149–61). Events themselves and the manner in which
 Ideological positioning in news translation 223

the events proceed are also presented differently in the ST and the TT, which re-
sults in deviations of changed directions mainly in force of graduation. Specifically,
such changes occur in quantifying the numbers and intensifying degree of quality
and vigor of process, as elaborated below with the following three examples.
(3) ST: And he hit back at a number of Western countries, including Australia,
that raised the alleged repression of Tibetans and Uyghurs. “We would
categorically reject this attempt to politicize the issue,” he said. (BBC,
Feb. 9, 2009)
TT: 对于 包括 澳大利亚在内的 若干 西方国家 提出的
As for including Australia several Western countries raised
所谓 中国 镇压 藏族人 和 维吾尔族人的 问题,
the alleged China’s repression of Tibetans and Uyghurs’ issue,
他说, 对于 个别 西方国家 关于 西藏问题的
he said, to a few western countries’ regarding Tibet issue’s
政治化 言论, 中方 坚决反对。
politicizing remarks, China’s side firmly rejects (RN, Feb. 11, 2009)
BT: […] (omitting he hit back at) as for several Western countries,
including Australia, that raised China’s alleged repression of Tibetans
and Uyghurs, he said that China would categorically reject a few
Western countries’ remarks politicizing the Tibet issue.

Example (3) shows two instances of deviations in describing processes (i.e., hit
back → omitted; attempt → remarks). With the two scaling down in force, the neg-
ative meanings indicated in the two processes in the ST are scaled down in the TT.
The omission of hit back tones down the Chinese delegation chief Li Baodong’s
strong reaction to the allegation of China’s “repression” of Tibetans and Uyghurs.
Turning attempt into remarks results in decreased intensification in describing the
motives behind such an allegation, since attempt, a noun describing a mental pro-
cess of strong potential of action (or a grammatical metaphor in Halliday’s [1994]
words), is tuned down in terms of vigor when replaced with remarks, a noun pro-
jecting a verbal process less likely to develop into action.
On the other hand, turning the issue into Tibet issue in the TT narrows the
scope of the allegation on China’s human rights situation. It is an instance of force
deviation in the Chinese version, found in translating a direct quotation attributed
to China’s delegation chief Li Baodong. The ST quotes Li Baodong saying “we
would categorically reject this attempt to politicize the issue.” The TT specifies the
issue as Tibet issue and thus limits the remarks as if concerning only the Tibet issue
rather than the issue of both Tibet and Uyghurs as indicated in the ST.
(4) ST: …, while Zimbabwe and Egypt hailed Beijing for major efforts to protect
human rights. Several countries saluted Beijing’s economic performance
224 Li Pan

as well as its rights record, and suggested China offered them an example
and beacon for their own development. (Reuters, Feb. 9, 2009)
TT: …, 津巴布韦 和 埃及 也 称赞 北京 为 保护 人权
…, Zimbabwe and Egypt also hailed Beijing for protecting human rights
付出了 巨大努力。 一些国家的 代表 称赞 北京的 经济
has given enormous effort Some countries’ representatives praised
Beijing’s
成就 及其 人权记录, 并 表示 中国 给 他们
economic achievement as well as (its) rights record, and suggested
China offer them
做出了表率, 为 他们自身的 发展 指明了 方向。
a good example, for their own development pointed clearly a direction
(RN, Feb. 11, 2009)
BT: …, while Zimbabwe and Egypt also hailed Beijing for enormous
effort in protecting human rights. Representatives from some countries
praised Beijing’s economic achievement as well as its rights record,
and suggested China offered them a good example and pointed a right
direction for their own development.

Example (4) displays how processes described with resources of positive value are
scaled up in the Chinese version. These scaling up instances are produced by the
translation method of variation, that is, positive descriptions are changed to in-
crease their positive value, for instance, major effort turned into 巨大努力 (huge
effort), salute turned into 称赞 (praise), and economic performance turned into
经济成就 (economic achievement). Deviating in this way, the other countries’
praise of China is raised in the translation. China’s effort in human rights and
achievement in economy are also given stronger admiration than in the ST with
offer an example turned into做出了表率 (offer a good example). In contrast to (4),
Example (5) shows how processes and qualities of negative value are scaled down
in force by the translator, particularly in terms of intensification.
(5) ST: This was in contrast to the virulent nationalism displayed in response
to Western criticism of how China handled the deadly riots in Tibet last
March and to foreigners protesting during the Olympic torch relay. (WP,
Feb. 4, 2009)
TT: 这 与 西方 批评 中国 处理 西藏骚乱 和
This to Western criticism of China handling the Tibet riot and
外国人 干扰 奥运 火炬 传递 所引发的 民族主义
foreigners disturbing the Olympic torch relay inciting the nationalistic
反应 形成了 鲜明对比。 (RN, Feb. 5, 2009)
reaction formed contrast
 Ideological positioning in news translation 225

BT: This formed contrast to the nationalistic reaction displayed in response to

Western criticism of how China handled the Tibet riot and to foreigners
disturbing the Olympic torch relay.

The TT in (5) is intensively loaded with deviations, in presenting both pro and anti-
China events and actions. The ST, in reporting the Chinese people’s reaction to the
shoe tossing attack on Wen Jiabao, the then Chinese Prime Minister, frames the
Chinese response as virulent nationalism and compares it with Chinese people’s
reaction to “Western criticism of how China handled the deadly riots in Tibet last
March and to foreigners protesting during the Olympic torch relay.” The italicized
expressions, all of which are heavily loaded with negative evaluative meanings in
the ST, are turned into the translation that brings in force deviations that help to
reduce the negative values either by tuning down the vigor of the process (e.g.,
protesting → disturbance) or by omitting negative pre-modifiers (e.g., deadly omit-
ted in referring the Tibet riot, and virulent omitted as modifier of nationalism).

5.3 Deviation in dissimulating representations

Dissimulation, a term borrowed from Thompson (1990, 62), is used here to refer
to ways used in translation to deny or obscure the presumptions or propositions
present in the original reports. From the perspective of CDA, the analysis of what
is absent is as significant as what is present in exploring ideological positioning in
the text. The omission of a proposition or a presumption in the TT may sometimes
be used to resist the ideology embedded in the ST, as exemplified below in three
extracts from the sample news. In (6) and (7) below, two clauses omitted in the TT
are both used by the ST news writer to include negative background information
about the countries making judgments on China’s human rights situations.
(6) ST: Sri Lanka — itself under fire even in the U.N. for its treatment of its
Tamilminority — denounced what it called “malign criticism of China,”
… (Reuters, Feb. 9, 2009)
TT: 斯里兰卡 谴责 “对 中国的 恶意 抨击”, …
Sri Lanka denounced “against China malign criticism” (RN, Feb. 11,
2009)
BT: Sri Lanka, [omitting itself under fire even in the U.N. for its treatment
of its Tamil minority] denounced [omitting what it called] “malign
criticism of China,” …

In (6), quoting Sri Lanka as a country denouncing other countries criticism of

China’s human rights, the ST inserts background information about Sri Lanka’s
own awkward situation in human rights issue. The TT omits the apposition of the
source in the ST, i.e., [Sri Lanka,] itself under fire even in the U.N. for its treatment
226 Li Pan

of its Tamil minority and the detached signal of the ST writer’s stance what it called.
The TT thus sounds less negative and detached than the ST.
(7) ST: Western, and some Latin American, countries raised the issues of
Tibet and treatment of the Muslim minority of Xinjiang province in
a generally oblique fashion, with only the once communist-run Czech
Republic detailing alleged repression. (Reuters, Feb. 9, 2009)
TT: 西方 国家 和 一些 拉美 国家 以 一种 笼 统的
Western countries and some Latin American countries in a general
方式， 提出了 西藏 和 新疆 等地 穆斯林的
fashion raised Tibet and Xinjiang those places Muslim minority’s
境况 等问题。 (Feb. 11, 2009)
situations those issues
BT: Western countries and some Latin American countries, in a general
fashion, raised the issues of Tibet and situation of the Muslim in those
places including Xinjiang, [omitting with only the once communist-run
Czech Republic detailing alleged repression].

In (7), the ST inserts once communist-run as a pre-modifier of the Czech Republic

in reporting that the Czech Republic detailed China’s repression of the minorities
in China in the UN Human Rights Council. The evaluative meaning is implic-
itly conveyed in the choice of the modifier which introduces the Czech Republic.
Identifying it as a communist-run country, the ST reminds readers that it used
to share the same ideology as China but is now attacking it. With the omission
of whole phrase, such a negative indication is made inaccessible to the Chinese
reader.
Apart from background information, the example below extracted from the
news on the shoe tossing event shows that omissions may also be used to deal with
assumptions framing unwanted interpretation, as found in the TT of (8).
(8) ST: In an apparent move to show national dignity had been maintained,
reports by CCTV and the official Xinhua News Agency included
prominent references to Britain apologizing. (AP, Feb. 3, 2009)
TT: 中央电视台 和 新华社的 报道 都 包含了
CCTV and Xinhua News Agency’s reports both included
英国方面 道歉的 内容。 (RN, Feb. 5, 2009)
Britain side’s apologizing contents
BT: [Omitting In an apparent move to show national dignity had been
maintained] reports by CCTV and Xinhua News Agency included
[Omitting prominent] references to Britain apologizing content.
 Ideological positioning in news translation 227

As shown in (8) BT, omission is involved in translating the clause in an apparent

move to show national dignity had been maintained. The clause includes an as-
sumption rather than a solid fact in the ST, about the motive behind the official
Chinese media report referring to Britain apologizing. The omission of the alleged
assumption additionally avoids a presumption — China’s national dignity was
threatened when a shoe was tossed at Premier Wen. The ST’s stress of references to
Britain apologizing in the reports by the two major Chinese media organizations
being prominent is also decreased in the TT with the modifier omitted.
The text analysis above demonstrates that the evaluation deviations related to
changes in graduation in RN’s translations help to establish a distinct ideological
positioning in the representation of the two events reported in the English origi-
nals. On the one hand, values of negative meanings are scaled down when present-
ing events or situations related to China, for example, when describing Chinese
people’s response to Western criticism on China, while positive values are scaled
up in the quotes commenting on China. On the other hand, sources of negative
values identified in positive comments are dissimulated by omission, and sources
of negative implication are omitted together with the negative comments, as in
the case of the Czech Republic. At the same time, sources of positive quotes about
China are sharpened so as to increase the authority of the comments, or softened
so that the categories are expanded to replace the specific field with a general field
so as to represent more people, as in the case of the human rights lawyer.

6. Processing analysis: Ideological positioning in “faithful translation”

Processing analysis is carried out in this section to interpret the evaluation de-
viations described in the text analysis. The analysis of the process of production
enables the discovery of “what motivates one set of choices over another” in the
different versions of reality constituted in discourse practice (Fairclough 1995b,
104). It is not difficult to see that the choices that give rise to the analyzed devia-
tions result from the decisions of RN’s in-house translators and editors, that is, the
producers of the translated texts. The assumptions held by these people and the
institutional practice involved in producing the translations are thus expected to
better interpret the contradiction between the agency’s claim of “faithful transla-
tion” and the actual mediation evidenced in the evaluation deviations which ac-
commodate ideological positioning distinct from those in the originals.
Analysis of the process of producing translated news at the news agency is in-
dicative of the interpretation of the mediation for distinct ideological positioning.
Results from a survey conducted by the present author at Reference New Agency
(hereafter RNA) (see Pan 2012, 2014a, 2014b for more details) reveal that the
228 Li Pan

operational procedure of news translation at RNA, which is collective in nature,

virtually facilitates mediation and hinders the true sense of faithful translation in
actual practice. The complete procedure goes like this: based on the selection and
summary by news-selecting stations home and abroad, the editorial staff choose
the news articles to be translated and decide the points to be translated for each
chosen article, which become an ‘order list of the day.’ Then the related paragraphs
of the points listed in the order are translated into Chinese by the Chinese staff
in the translation department. Next, the translated texts are reviewed by the ‘top-
checkers’; these are the editors of RN who make decisions regarding omissions and
naturalization, and design the headlines.
The production process is quite revealing because it leads to potential contra-
dictions between convictions of the translation producers. Firstly, the translators
do not share identical views on the very notion of ‘faithful translation,’ nor are
their views consistent with the requirements of the editor. The two editors inter-
viewed in the survey insist that faithful translation means literal translation, the
back translation of which is expected to be the same as the original in all aspects,
including hard facts, sentence structures, meaning and tones of the key expres-
sions. However, among the 35 translators responding to the questionnaire, half
do not consider overtones of the expressions of key elements in the news as a vital
factor of faithful translation. Secondly, the ‘top checkers,’ the editors at RN, very
often do not understand the source language and they can only naturalize or delete
expressions in the translation rather than being able to ‘catch’ any deviations in
attitudinal meanings in the translation, unless the expressions sound awkward in
their co-texts. This permits the translators’ subjective intervention in translating
some expressions which they find uncomfortably negative or biased against China,
or to think “proper” guidance is needed to avoid possible “harmful influence” on
the target reader, as reflected in the cases of scaling down negative presentation
related to China, as found in the analysis (see (3) and (5)). Such intervention can
also happen, consciously or subconsciously, when rendering positive comments,
and (4) is a case in point. Thirdly, the editors’ omissions and naturalizations in the
translation are, in some sense, a means of intervention and mediation as well, and
so is the selection of source texts and points to be translated by the editors. Every
translated report published in RN has actually been rendered from paragraphs
selected from several reports produced by different news outlets, as are the two
translated reports analyzed above. Each is translated respectively from English re-
ports of news organizations headquartered either in America or Britain.
The different ideological positioning evident in the evaluative resources de-
ployed in the STs and the TTs is decided partially by the different status of the news
organizations producing them. On the one hand, the six English news reports that
RN takes as originals are disseminated respectively on the web sites of four major
 Ideological positioning in news translation 229

Anglophone news organizations. These media powers, while claiming to be, or

regarded as, impartial and objective in spreading news internationally, have been
frequently found to impose their values and views on their readers and have been
accused of biased coverage (Rendall, Ward and Hall 2009), especially of the “axis
of evil” countries (see, e.g., Shoar-Ghaffari 1985, Izadi 2009, and Kamal 2010 for
WP’s biased coverage on Iran) or negative wording in identifying leaders of those
countries in their reports (e.g., Seo, Johnson and Stein 2009). All these news insti-
tutions share something in common in their ideological positioning when report-
ing events relating to China. For instance, AP, which considers itself the “most
trusted source of independent news gathering” with committing to the “highest
standards of objective, accurate journalism” (http://www.ap.org/company/about-
us), could not resist the temptation to insert its own assumption along with some
factual descriptions (see (8) ST). Reuters identifies negative implications in the
Sri Lanka’s comments on China’s human rights situations, in the ST of (6), and of
Czech identified as the once communist-run country in (7) ST. BBC and WP, both
often criticized for alleged negative coverage of China (Liu 2010), are especially
good at choosing expressions charged with evaluative value (see ST in (3) and
(5)). With apparent ideological positioning in their reports, the Anglophone news
agencies could not be taken as mere transmitters of already existing information;
rather they are actually institutions subtly conveying attitude, values and positions
in their selection of words and expressions and “textual quotes from informants in
order to convey interpretations of events” (Bielsa and Bassnett 2009, 89).
On the other hand, RN, from which the translated samples are collected, is a
newspaper published by RNA, a News Agency operated under the Chinese state-
run Xinhua News Agency. Some of the respondents to the questionnaire do admit
they need to take into consideration the stance of Xinhua Agency. This may help
to explain the choice of some expressions in RN’s translated texts. For instance,
the rendition of the deadly riots in Tibet last March into西藏骚乱 (Tibet riots) in
(5) is a choice reflecting the RN producers’ alignment with its parent organization,
Xinhua News Agency, which most frequently uses 西藏骚乱 to refer to the event.
Such an alignment was also confirmed by one of the editors in the interview. The
adjustment of the evaluative resources evidenced in our data analysis thus partly
reflects RN producers’ effort to achieve a balance between striving to be faith-
ful to the original reports and their position of being in-house staff of a Chinese
state-run news agency. Xinhua is generally regarded as the major “mouthpiece”
for the Chinese government. Such an official status also makes it impossible for
RN and its producers to subscribe to the ideological positioning accommodated in
the English reports disseminated by the Anglophone media powers. Its producers
actually admitted in an interview (Pan 2010a) that they needed to consider the at-
titude and stance of the government as well while striving for faithful translation.
230 Li Pan

This can be the pivotal reason that evaluative values are scaled up in presenting
information such as positive comments on the government’s performance regard-
ing economic development and the human rights situation, while those linguistic
resources with negative values or implications are toned down, either by scaling
down the values or obliterating the allusion so as to meet the government’s pref-
erence for presenting its people with good news and making them aware of the
country’s progress and international recognition.
In addition, the translations depend to some extent on the producers’ percep-
tion of the coverage of China in the Western press and their presumption of origi-
nal and target readers’ reactions to negative reports on China. The same survey
reveals that, consistent with some scholars’ observations of the widespread belief
in China in the Western media’s usually negative representation of China (e.g.,
Wang 1996; Sparks 2010), the majority of RN’s in-house translators believe that
most international news reports on China are likely to be biased. Some translators
working for RNA believe that the possible reactions of the target reader should be
taken into consideration even though faithful translations are expected. Moreover,
the survey reveals that two thirds of the 35 respondents working as in-house trans-
lators at RNA believe proper guidance should be given to Chinese readers so as
to help them to avoid “possible harmful influence” from biased and negative re-
ports on China (Pan 2010a). To some extent, the distinct ideological positioning
constructed in the translated reports is not surprising because news reports, em-
bedded with ideological positions and values which can be varied from one news
organization to another, “do not merely ‘mirror realities’ as is sometimes naively
assumed” (Fairclough 1995a, 103). Similarly in news translation, “all translation
involves the manipulation of an original as it is reshaped for a new audience,” as
Bielsa and Bassnett (2009, 15) point out, and the requirement to be “faithful” to the
original in translation, like the claim to be objective in journalism, is a question-
able concept (89).

7. Social analysis: Possible explanations

Situated in distinct cultural and social contexts, the Chinese and Western news
organizations are unavoidably subject to the influence of the social, cultural and
political values and beliefs of the societies which they respectively serve. The dif-
ferent socio-cultural contexts of the ST and the TT could thus contain the fun-
damental factors responsible for the evaluation deviations in the translated texts.
First of all, the stress on different social and cultural values tends to trigger
ideological conflicts between the Chinese community and the Western countries.
The emphasis on values related to individuality and aggressiveness in the Western
 Ideological positioning in news translation 231

societies and reflected in Western media could be deemed as contradictory to the

values of collectivism, harmony, and cooperation deeply rooted in Chinese tradi-
tional culture and still advocated in modern Chinese society. The divergence could
be responsible for some of the softening deviations in RN’s translations, including
the instances of identifying sources as parts of groups instead of individuals, such
as the case of replacing “Pu Zhiqing, a human rights lawyer in Beijing” with “a
lawyer in Beijing” in (2). The stress on harmony in Chinese society could explain
the deviations generated by omitting or altering the descriptions of conflicts and
assumptions of “non-harmonious” implications presented in the original reports.
This is reflected in the deviations related to pre-modifiers of negative ideologi-
cal values, for instance, the downscaling instances generated by omitting deadly
before the riot in Tibet and deleting virulent in the description of the Chinese re-
sponse to the Western media’s “criticism” and support of the Tibetan separatist ac-
tivities in (5). Some deviations could be the results of the impact of various factors.
For instance, the omission of the word virulent could also be motivated by the RN
news producers’ desire to adhere to the official stance as well as not to run counter
to the public’s feelings and attitudes, since the Chinese government praised the
response as “patriotic zeal” and being “a sincere demonstration of public opinion”
(Buckley 2008).
The value conflicts between the two cultures may result in distinct reporting
perspectives which tend to accommodate different ideological positioning in the
English original and Chinese translated reports. Western media are generally in
favor of negative coverage of China (Yang and Zhang 2003; Li 2005), though it
has been argued that such a tendency is not specifically limited to reports related
to China (Sparks 2010). Coverage of conflicts, disasters, and dark side of society
is generally more frequently found in Western news media. American and British
media seldom report other countries’ successful economic or political successes,
especially those run by the Communist Party (ibid.). Conversely, it is widely ob-
served that the Chinese news media inclines to “reporting happiness and ignoring
sufferings” in its coverage of events related to domestic realities. Events that could
pose embarrassments to either the country or the government are not commonly
covered. The difference could help the English and the Chinese translated reports
of the shoe toss event to be better understood. While Western media like WP and
AP tries to highlight the background to the reaction towards or the implications of
the event (5) and (8), the incident is culturally unacceptable in China, and it would
not be the Chinese media’s practice to make it a prominent headline. RN is thus
not expected to follow WP’s and AP’s reporting perspectives but understandably
omits the assumption of Chinese reports of the references to Britain apologizing
as to show national dignity had been maintained (8).
232 Li Pan

Additionally, the majority of Western countries, most likely out of suspicion

and distrust rooted in the pivotal difference in political ideologies, often see the
defects of the countries run by the Communist Party, but rarely the strengths. The
issue of China’s human rights situation has always been addressed with great con-
cern by some Western powers. For years, the Washington government has even
taken the trouble to work out and issue an annual report on China’s human rights
situation. Western countries prefer to believe, and make others believe, that the
Chinese people, particularly the ethnic groups in China, are still suffering at the
hands of an oppressive Chinese government and do not have any human rights.
America, leading other Western countries including Britain, has always optimized
all possible opportunities to show concerns for China’s human rights situations.
Western media, like their countries, tend to focus on human rights issues and other
aspects that could be interpreted as caused by the Chinese government’s incompe-
tence, though they are not in a position to criticize it openly in their reports. Their
reports incline to quote more negative than positive discourses regarding issues
in relation to the ruling Communist government and their allies, as found in the
English reports above. Both sample news items analyzed are inherently related to
the issue of China’s human rights: one is about the debate of the country’s record,
and the other reports the shoe toss attack and other offensive acts caused by “con-
cern” for China’s human rights issue. The concern of Western governments and
media regarding China’s human rights issue is generally viewed by the Chinese
public as one of the several strategies to constrain China. The majority of Chinese,
while admitting there are some problems in the social order and justice in their
own country, generally agree that the present Chinese government has signifi-
cantly improved both the human rights situation and the economic performance.
Fundamentally, the deviations facilitate distinct ideological positioning in
the translation can be ascribed in some cases to the differences between Chinese
and Western political values, institutions and practice. Embedded with stances
and attitudes consistent with mainstream values and beliefs in China, the Chinese
target texts reinforce pro-China voices while anti-China ones are blurred or sup-
pressed. For instance, the positive evaluative resources are scaled up in order to
position the Chinese reader to perceive a competent Chinese government, while
descriptions and assumptions charged with negative implications are toned down
in terms of evaluative values so as not to run contradictory to the generally belief
among the Chinese people of a progressing motherland.
Of course, not all the mentioned deviations involve deliberate manipulation
on the part of RN’s producers. Some choices are probably out of instinct or per-
sonal preference. However, such choices can still reveal signs of social and insti-
tutional ideological influence considering the fact that every individual in RN,
no matter whether editor or translator, is continuously subject to the ubiquitous
 Ideological positioning in news translation 233

influence of the mainstream ideology of the institution and the society of the
Chinese mainland.

8. Concluding remarks

This article, drawing on Appraisal Theory and Fairclough’s CDA approach, has
investigated how evaluative resources have been manipulated to realize ideologi-
cally different positioning in translated news. It is found that in news translation,
the evaluative resources deployed to identify news actors and present news actions
are crucial for distinct positioning in the translated news that leads to different
interpretations of the reported event. The text analysis reveals that contrary to the
general expectation of objectivity in news reporting, both the original news and
its translations are not free from deploying linguistic resources to make judgments
and express attitudes implicitly in representing news ‘realities.’ In the translations,
the changes in the evaluative elements are a subtle yet effective means to construct
positioning in line with the ideology and culture of the target society. The ways
that translated texts reposition the target reader with the adjustments of the evalu-
ative values are found to be better understood not just by locating the evaluative
resources in their co-texts but, more revealingly, by taking into consideration the
various factors involved in the institutional practice of the news agency in ques-
tion as well as the social context in which the translating institution functions and
its translations are intended to serve. In this sense, Fairclough’s three-dimension
model and the depiction of graduation in AT are helpful in forming the analyti-
cal model for evaluation and ideological positioning in news translation, which
is more often than not in need of mediating or recontextualizating the translated
news to fit in a institutional and social context which rarely shares identical ideolo-
gies with the counterpart. In RN’s case, the evaluation deviations can be regarded
as signs of RN’s resistance to the ideological positioning of the original reports and
its attempt to contest the hegemony of Anglophone media in spreading discourses
related to China’s realities to its domestic readers.
Even with all the deviations analyzed above, translations carried in RN can
be regarded as “faithful versions” in the sense that the translated paragraphs in
RN rarely have the widely observed alterations found typical of news translation
in those global news agencies like Reuters and Agence France-Presse (Bielsa and
Bassnett 2009). With such a different practice in producing Chinese translation
of foreign news items, RN is worthy of investigation, not only because of its large
circulation but also of its significant status in China, both as the major newspa-
per solely engaged in providing Chinese versions of reports disseminated by news
media outside the Chinese mainland, and as the official newspaper under Xinhua
234 Li Pan

that has long served as the authoritative source of information for Chinese lead-
ers and people about other countries’ policies and views towards China. In view
of that and the rare application of CDA and AT to news translation analysis, the
investigation, though based on analysis of a small data set, has thus both practical
and theoretical implications for the study of news translation in China, as well as
in other countries which have a similar translation practice in their news media.

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Author’s address
Li Pan
Department of Translation and Interpreting
Faculty of English Language and Culture
Guangdong University of Foreign Studies
No. 2, Baiyun Dadao Bei
Guangzhou 510420
China
Jacy2000@163.com