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Article published In: Target
Vol. 27:2 (2015) ► pp.215–237

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Ideological positioning in news translation

A case study of evaluative resources in reports on China

 | Guangdong University of Foreign Studies
Published online: 8 June 2015
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.27.2.03pan
This article investigates the Chinese translations of several English news reports on China’s human rights issue carried in Reference News, a Chinese authoritative 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 compared with their English source texts using Appraisal Theory (Martin, James R., and Peter R.R. White. 2005. The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) as the micro analytical framework and Fairclough’s (. 1995a. Media Discourse. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, . 1995b. Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) three-dimension model of Critical Discourse Analysis as the explanatory framework.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Ideology and Critical Discourse Analysis
  • 3.Ideological positioning, the language of evaluation, and evaluation in translation
  • 4.An analytical model for evaluation and positioning in news translation
  • 5.Text analysis: Evaluation deviations in the translated reports
    • 5.1Deviations in identifying news actors
    • 5.2Deviations in presenting news events
    • 5.3Deviation in dissimulating representations
  • 6.Processing analysis: Ideological positioning in “faithful translation”
  • 7.Social analysis: Possible explanations
  • 8.Concluding remarks
  • References
References (67)
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