Chinese Political Discourse in Translation: A Corpus-based Critical Discourse Analysis

Building on Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis (CDA) framework, Du examines the official translators’ agency in reconstructing the image of China. Comparing the source text and target text, her book focuses on ideologically striking translation shifts that occur at different levels.

Drawing on the Seven Reports to the National Congresses of the Communist Party of China (CPC) (1992-2022) as a corpus, Du explores the official translators’ agency in representing the image of China, as well as the recontextualization of the translated discourse of the Report to the National Congress of the CPC in the international media. She delves into the balance between discourse, ideology, and political and social function, and argues that at their essence, discourse changes by the translator represent a change of ideology, and the acquisition of discourse power is the manifestation of ideological power.

Striking the balance between theoretical and empirical studies, this book reveals the role of discourse in building the media view of China, corroborating the interrelationship between discourse and ideology. The book will be of interest to researchers and postgraduate students of discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, and media studies.

Lijuan Du holds a PhD from Shanghai International Studies University. Her research interests include political discourse translation, corpus linguistics, and critical discourse analysis. Her publications appeared in Humanities & Social Sciences Communications, Critical Arts, Journal of Language and Politics, Perspectives, Meta, and SAGE Open.