A Study of the Translation of the Report on the Work of the Government (2021) from the Perspective of Critical Discourse Analysis Junning Li
Guilin University
Abstract: The Report on the Work of Government (RWG) is an authoritative source which involves developments in politics, economy, culture, diplomacy, and public well-being. The RWG plays an important role for the international community to learn about China. Systematic functional grammar (SFG) is often applied to detailed text analysis. CDA advocates that language is determined by social functions. This study focuses on the transformation from the CDA perspective to identify how political manipulation is realized through selection of different linguistic forms in the translation of RWG.
Keywords: Critical discourse analysis; Report on the work of the government; Ideology
DOI: 10.47297/wspciWSP2516-252714.20210506
1. Introduction
discourseC hina has played an increasing role in the international society nowadays.
People all over the world have a stronger desire to learn more about China, Accordingly, China is willing to make itself better known to the world at the same time. Thus the translation of the Report on the Work of Government (RWG) delivered by the Chinese premier at the annual meeting of National People’s Congress(NPC) is of great significance to promoting mutual communication, increasing friendship, expanding common grounds and eliminating misunderstanding. However, most studies focus on the linguistic features of the text from functional approaches, and the researchers usually discuss how to avoid the linguistic errors in translation. Few studies have been conducted to study the
About the author: Junning Li (1986-11), Female, Han, Lianyungang, Jiangsu Province, Master’s degree, Lecturer in Guilin University, Research fields: Systemic-functional Lin-guistic, Discourse analysis.
Funded project: Research on the Diplomatic Discourse in English Translation of Reports on the Work of the Government in the New Era from the Systemic-functional Perspective (2020KY55019).
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interrelationships among language, power and ideology in the report.
RWG is a representative document of government, which gives the conclusion of the government work in the past years, and puts forward the working plans and targets of governments in the next year, as well as the relevant affairs like diplomacy, wellbeing and so on. The report can clearly reflect how the government deal with the domestic and foreign affairs. So the report on the work of Government has different functions from other forms of reports. There are two reasons for selecting Report on the Work of the Government in 2021 as the discourse. First of all, this was the latest report by the time this study had begun. Secondly, last year was an extraordinary year in the history of the People’s Republic of China. the Chinese people responded with tremendous tenacity when facing the  severe impact of a sudden coronavirus epidemic and the global economic recession.
2. Theoretical Basis
System Functional Linguistics (SFL) is an approach developed by Halliday. It is the linguistics that regards language as a social semiotic system. In Halliday’s theory, the functions of language can be divided into ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function, and it is the famous metafunctions that people are familiar with. The reason that Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) adopts Halliday’s functional approach to language can be explained as the relationship between the grammatical system and the social and personal needs that language is required to serve. (Wodak &
Meryer, 2001:8) And the development of CDA is a continuous integration with other disciplines. Therefore, Halliday’s System Functional Linguistics becomes the theoretical basis of the present study.
Fairclough (1989) holds that critical discourse analysis takes languages as social practice as well as indications of ideology. Fairclough (1995), Xin Bin (1996) and many other scholars regard it as an important method that helps explore the relationship between language, ideology and power. The approach of CDA makes its name for the analysis of the relationship between discourse, power and ideology, with the aim to uncover the hidden ideology in the discourse. CDA is an effective theory of discourse analysis developed in western linguistics in the late 1970s. Fowler and Kress are the scholars who firstly introduced the discourse analysis into critical linguistics. At the very beginning, CDA studies focused on the relationship between language,power and ideology. The concept “ideology” used CDA is not the same as that used as a political concept or belief, but is “an overall opinion of people when they understand the world or summarize their experience” (Fowler, 1991: 10).
In consideration of the views of CDA, we can clearly find that CDA is used to analyze the relations between discourses in social practice and other elements,
A Study of the Translation of the Report on the Work of the Government (2021) from the Perspective of Critical Discourse Analysis
Creativity and Innovation  Vol.5 No.6 2021
and to find out how the discourses are ideologically shaped by the relations of powers. CDA is an analytical methodology that can not only be used to study the applications of discourses , but also to study the changes of society, culture and politics. CDA is a combination of discourse analysis and social and political practice in discourse. With the analysis of social,cultural, political elements, CDA reveals the power relations hidden in the discourses, and focuses on the influences of social factors.
The term “transformation” in linguistics usually refers to a rule that takes an input typically called the Deep Structure and a Surface Structure . The deep structure represented the core semantic relations of a sentence, and was mapped on to the surface structure via transformation. Transformation refers to the changing relations of the two different grammatical structures. Transformation sometimes also refers to the changing process of ideology in discourse. During the process of observing the transformation in discourse, nominalization and passivization should be paid special attention to. Nominalization means that a noun component is used when the same meaning can be expressed by a verb structure or sentence, “Nominalization can turn the process and activity into a condition and an object, changing the specific object into the abstract one.”(Fairclough, 1989:182) Besides, passivization also has the same function of nominalization, and it can also weaken the motion sense of
the process or activity.
Therefore,the study will focus on the analysis of nominalization and passivization in the report , so that the influence of ideology on the linguistic forms can be better proved. And the study will reveal the hidden factors that affect the language more clearly.
3. Critical Analysis of Translation of Report on the Work of Government (2021)
Report on the Work of Government is a typical political discourse with obvious political and social functions. The discourses used in the study is Report on the Work of the Government (2021), which are cited from the Chinese Government’s Official Web. This study aims to reveal the relations between ideology and the linguistic forms in the report, and then to discuss the significance of CDA .
Nominalization and passivization have the similar textual metafunction, they can be used alternatively to get the ideological effect. Therefore,the present study will focus on the analysis of nominalization and passivization in RWG and its translation, so that the influence of ideology on the linguistic forms can be better proved. SFL is an important theoretical basis of CDA.
(1) Nominalization
Norminalization refers to a noun component that is used when the same
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meaning can be expressed by a verb or sentence. The use of nominalization would increase the objectivity of the discourse.
Eg.1 着力提升发展质量效益，保持经济持续
健康发展。Improving the quality and effectiveness of development and maintaining sustained and healthy economic growth.
Eg.2 全面推进乡村振兴，完善新型城镇化战
略。 Advancing rural revitalization across the board and improving the new urbanization strategy.
Eg.3 推动绿发展，促进人与自然和谐共生。Promoting green development and ensuring
harmony between humanity and nature.
The examples in the table above are some subtitles from the report, which are used to summarize the
main achievements of the government. The above examples are some of the subtitles from the first part of the report,  which is the review of the government work in the past five years, and these subtitles are employed to summarize the main achievements of government in different areas. By the comparative analysis, we can clearly find that the verbs used in the Chinese versions are not translated corresponding in the English version. The verb phrases in the Chinese version such as “ 提升”，”推进”，”促进” and so on are translated into noun phrases  “improving”, “advancing”, “promoting” and so on. The expressions in the Chinese version put emphasis on the action effect, however, the noun phrases in English translation change the actions into conditions. As a result, the effects expressed in the Chinese and English versions are totally different. The Chinese discourse emphasizes the efforts and achievements made by Chinese government in the past five year with the use of verbs phrases. On the contrary, the noun phrases used in the English version weaken the motion sense of the Chinese sentences and make them more objective and believable for the target readers. The use of verb phrases in the English translation will give readers an imperative feeling, which is against the Chinese policy of putting people first.
(2)  Passivation
Passivation is anther type of transformation. Omitting of the actor, passivation can weaken the motion
sense as well. For example:
Eg.4全面深化改革取得重大突破，供给侧结构性改革持续推进,”放管服”改革不断深入,
营商环境持续改善。Major breakthroughs were achieved in deepening reform across the board. Supply-side structural reform was steadily advanced, as were reforms to streamline administration and delegate power, improve regulation, and upgrade services.
Eg.5教育、卫生、文化等领域发展取得新成就。New achievements were made in education, health care, culture and other sectors.
Eg.6 国防和军队建设水平大幅提升。Notable advances were made in the development of national defense and the armed forces.
A Study of the Translation of the Report on the
Work of the Government (2021) from the Perspective of Critical Discourse Analysis
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The examples in the table above reflect the use of passivation. In the examples of Chinese version, “重大突破”, “新成就”, “大幅提升” work as the object components in the sentences. While in the English version, the phrases “major breakthrough”, “new achievements”, “notable advances” are all at the beginning of each sentence, working as the marked theme to emphasize the information expressed in these components. Consequently, the passivation in the report changes the active voice into passive voice, making the achievements and progress more impressive and obvious for the readers.
With the comparative analysis above from the perspective of nominalization and passivation, it can be concluded that ideologies influence the source text and the target text. Therefore, the translation can be expressed in a better way to deliver the meaning from the source text and conforms to the target readers.
4. Conclusions
By the application of the theory of CDA and analytical methods of SFG, the differences of linguistic forms in the report can be found. And through a deeper study of these differences that lie in the different cultural backgrounds, social systems and values, the translation of the report is deeply influenced by ideologies. CDA is of great significance in analyzing the translation of RWG and the guid
ance on the translation of political discourses like the government report. In the future studies, when making a contrastive analysis of  different translation versions of RWG, especially selecting the version that is translated by foreign countries, the influences of cultures and ideologies of different countries should be emphasized.
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