Gu Chonglong
Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, China.
Front Psychol. 2022 Jul 11;13:892791. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.892791. eCollection 2022.
If the important role of written translation in the construction and contestation of knowledge and narratives remains largely under-explored, then the part played by interpreting and interpreters is even less examined in knowledge construction and story-telling. At a time when Beijing increasingly seeks to bolster its discursive power and have the Chinese story properly told, the interpreter-mediated and televised Premier-Meets-the-Press conferences constitute a typical discursive event and in articulating China's officially sanctioned "voice." Discursive in nature, the institutionalised event permits Beijing to construct a desired version of truth, fact and narrative in front of the more vociferous and dominant West. As an attempt to employ digital humanities (DH) methods to real-world language use, this corpus-based CDA study explores the press conference interpreters' agency and mediation in rendering key concepts and discourses (e.g., ECONOMY and REFORM) constitutive of the broader Reform and Opening-up meta-narrative, which legitimises China's political and economic systems, developments, policies and positions in the post-1978 era. The interpreters are found to maintain and often further reinforce Beijing's discourse in English at various levels. Apart from indicating issues of institutional alignment, this study points to interpreters' agency in communicating beyond national borders, (re)constructing political and institutional knowledge, counterbalancing the naturalised and taken-for-granted Western narratives, and contributing to the shifting East-West power differentials discursively. This study highlights the significance of interpreters as indispensable (re)tellers of the Chinese story in an increasingly mediat(is)ed world, where the interpreted discourse is routinely quoted on various platforms and taken for granted as the correct version of Beijing's official "voice."
如果书面翻译在知识与叙事的建构及争辩中所起的重要作用在很大程度上仍未得到充分探究，那么口译及口译员在知识建构和故事讲述中所起的作用就更鲜有人研究了。在北京日益寻求增强其话语力量并讲好中国故事之际，由口译员介导并通过电视转播的总理记者会构成了一个典型的话语事件，在阐明中国官方认可的“声音”方面发挥着作用。从本质上讲，这一制度化事件具有话语性，使北京能够在更为喧嚣和占主导地位的西方面前构建出一个理想版本的真相、事实和叙事。作为将数字人文（DH）方法应用于现实世界语言使用的一次尝试，这项基于语料库的批评性话语分析（CDA）研究探讨了记者会口译员在呈现构成更广泛改革开放元叙事的关键概念和话语（如“经济”和“改革”）时所发挥的作用及调解作用，该元叙事使中国在1978年后的政治和经济体制、发展、政策及立场合法化。研究发现，口译员在各个层面维持并常常进一步强化北京的英语话语。除了表明制度一致性问题外，本研究还指出了口译员在跨国界交流、（重新）构建政治和制度知识、平衡已自然化且被视为理所当然的西方叙事以及在话语层面促成东西方权力差异转变方面所发挥的作用。本研究凸显了口译员作为在日益媒介化的世界中讲述中国故事不可或缺的（重新）讲述者的重要性，在这个世界里，口译后的话语在各种平台上经常被引用，并被视为北京官方“声音”的正确版本而被视为理所当然。
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