Translation Strategies for Cultural Specifics in Political Documents: Case Study of the Translation of the Report of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China
Jul 2026· Scientific Journal Of Humanities and Social Sciences· Vol 8, pp. 130-135· 0 citations· 13 references
Abstract
As Chinese culture “goes global,” political documents have become a key medium for external communication. Taking the official English version of the 19th CPC National Congress Report as its corpus, this paper applies Javier Franco Aixelá’s eleven strategies for translating culture-specific items (CSIs) to the analysis of culture-loaded words and phrases. It further examines these strategies from the perspectives of domestication and foreignization, exploring how to minimize the limits of translatability and maximize translation acceptability so that China’s political message is accurately and effectively conveyed to international audiences.
Literary translation involves more than linguistic conversion; it also entails the reconstruction and re-encoding of cultural meanings. From the perspective of cultural translation theory, this study takes Liu Cixin’s original Chinese novel The Three-Body Problem and its Spanish translation El problema de los tres cuerpos by Javier Altayó as the objects of analysis. Drawing on Nida’s framework of cultural classification, culturally embedded elements in the source text are grouped into five categories: ecological, material, social, religious-philosophical, and linguistic. Through a comparative reading of the Chinese and Spanish versions, the paper examines the translator’s shifting strategies among foreignization, domestication, and cultural negotiation. The analysis suggests that the translation does not rely on a single or fixed strategy. When dealing with culture-specific elements that carry strong historical or regional specificity, the translator is more likely to preserve foreignness through transliteration, literal translation, or brief explanatory additions. In contrast, for expressions that may hinder comprehension or lead to cultural misinterpretation, freer rendering, generalization, or contextual adjustment tend to be adopted in order to reduce the cognitive burden on target readers. Overall, the Spanish translation of The Three-Body Problem reveals a flexible negotiation process, in which cultural difference is retained to varying degrees while comprehension is facilitated and narrative flow is maintained. This case offers a useful reference for the Spanish dissemination of Chinese science fiction and more broadly for the cross-cultural transmission of heterogenous cultural elements.
Yueyang Zhang· Journal of Language, Culture...· 0 citations
In real practice, political text translations are in line with a country’s main foreign policies. Thus, an in-depth understanding on communicative strategies employed in translating political texts, e.g. press statements, is essential. The paper analyses the translation of press statements from the Source Text (Mandarin Chinese) into the Target Texts (English and Indonesian). To elaborate, this study uses van Dijk’s Political Discourse Analysis at the macro (contexts) and micro (texts) levels. By considering Newmark’s equivalent translation concept, as well as metaphor and annotated translations, the analysis reveals that the translation from China’s perspective uses metaphors and China’s socio-cultural values within the techniques of (i) equivalency of message and form, and (ii) active- passive. Overall, this study will be beneficial for analysts, translators, and the public who are curious about studies on the translation of press statements delivered by the Chinese Minister for Foreign Affairs.
A. N. V. Hutabarat· Paradigma Jurnal Kajian Buda...· 0 citations
In the current context of accelerating the spread of Chinese traditional culture, the translation of culture-loaded terms has become a key issue in the study of translation and intercultural communication. Based on the analysis framework of translation compensation theory, this study takes the column of “24 Solar Terms” in China Daily as the corpus, and systematically explores the translation methods of culture-loaded words in this column. According to the four categories of ecology, material, society and language, this study examines how translators compensate for cultural loss and information loss in translation. The results show that the translator widely adopts compensation techniques such as free translation, amplification, transliteration and annotation, and logical explicitation, which effectively improves the understanding smoothness and text acceptance of the target readers while maintaining the cultural connotation of the source language. These strategies not only ensure the faithful transmission of cultural information, but also effectively promote the overseas dissemination of Chinese excellent traditional culture. It is expected that the research results can provide useful reference for the Chinese-English translation practice of culture-loaded words in similar publicity texts in the future.
Zhiming Jiang, Mengyu Wang· Scientific Journal Of Humani...· 0 citations
This thesis aims to investigate the translation strategies for culture-specific items in the English translation of Moses on the Plain, a representative work of “New Northeast Literature”, so as to provide a practical reference for the overseas reception of contemporary regional Chinese literature. Adopting Aixelá’s theory of culture-specific items as the core framework and incorporating the cultural classification models of Newmark and Nida, the study selects typical examples from four dimensions—ecological, material, social, and linguistic culture—for analysis. The thesis shows that the translator tends to employ retention strategies such as transliteration and literal translation for ecological culture-specific items; the absolute universalization strategy for material culture-specific items; a combination of literal translation and absolute universalization for social culture-specific items; and free translation and functional equivalence for linguistic culture-specific items. Overall, the translator seeks a balance between “cultural authenticity” and “reader acceptability”, prioritizing the readability and communicative intent of the target text.
Bo-Han Zhou, Dan Cui· Communication Society and Me...· 0 citations
Documentary is an important medium for the overseas dissemination of culture. Therefore, subtitle translation in documentaries has made the translation of culture-loaded words a significant topic in translation studies. This paper takes the documentary Journeys in Nature: The Ewenki Series as its research subject, analyzing the subtitle translation of culture-loaded words within the framework of domestication and foreignization. It explores the translation strategies for different types of culture-loaded words and their intercultural communication effects. The findings reveal that foreignization is predominantly adopted for place names among ecological culture-loaded words and domestication is employed for linguistic and social culture-loaded words. Meanwhile, the translation of material culture-loaded words demonstrates great flexibility. Overall, the documentary exhibits a strategic preference for domestication supplemented by foreignization, offering a reference for the subtitle translation of documentaries on ethnic minorities and the international dissemination of Chinese culture.
Wen Sun· Studies in Linguistics and L...· 0 citations
Recent research in translation studies has emphasised the function of the text as the
focus of translation analysis. The implication of this for legal translation is that the
expected effects of the target text determine the strategies adopted in the translation
process. Given that legal terminology presents various levels of challenges to
translators, it would be advantageous for legal translation analysis to adopt a more
specific approach, and for translator training to incorporate more specialised
knowledge. It is within this context that this study sought to investigate the
terminological challenges of legal translation and provide a platform to further
investigate the implications for legal translation and social justice in general,
particularly in a country such as South Africa where the field of legal translation is
‘under-researched’ and ‘has received little, if any, attention in translation theory and at
tertiary institutions’ (Cornelius 2011: 123). The study draws from the Descriptive
Translation Studies’ (DTS) sub-branches, namely, the process-oriented approach,
product-oriented approach and function-oriented approach. This is because of the
relations that exist between these approaches in translation. In this regard, Toury
(1995) argues that there is no point in conducting a product-oriented study if questions
relating to the determining force of its intended function, and to the choices made by
the translator governed by the norms of establishing a product, are not considered. In
advancing his argument, Toury contends that it is the function of the translation
through its linguistic make-up and/or relationships that connect it to the original, which
yield and govern the strategies which are adopted during the production of the
translation that would result in a translation process as a whole. The study adopted a
qualitative case study design approach to gain a deeper understanding of the
translation decisions made by translators within a particular context, in light of the
translation challenges that they encounter when translating legal texts. The study used
a thematic analysis method to analyse translation styles employed by translators in
the translation of eThekwini Municipality By-Laws. The translation styles were
identified and exemplified in the framework of three broad categories: legal terms -
technical terms, polysemous words and word strings/legal synonyms; linguistic terms - modal verbs, archaic adverbs, collocations, ambiguous/vague words, long sentences
and passive voice, and culture-specific terms/expressions. Norms were also identified that are at play during the translation act. Data was accessed from the eThekwini
Municipality website. It consisted of eight pieces of legislation in English and their
translations. The findings of the study reveal that the main challenges encountered by
the translators of the selected legal texts were both linguistic and socio-cultural in
nature. As a result, the translators adopt various translation styles such as borrowing,
adaptation, naturalisation, paraphrasing, and functional equivalents to render the
source texts in the target language. These styles produced translations are generally
acceptable in the isiZulu language and culture, even though a few of the translations
led to meaning shifts in the target language. The norms that were operational during
the translation process shaped translators’ decision-making with respect to the
translation styles they adopted in the translation. This is consistent with Toury’s (1995)
assertion that norms determine the translation strategies that a translator adopts. In
other words, they serve as a guide in the translation process regarding strategies
used.
S. Dlamini· 0 citations
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