An Appraisal Study Of The English Translation Of Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokespersons’ Remarks On The United States At Regular Press Conferences

As an important part of the Chinese government,the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been committed to releasing information on China’s major diplomatic events and stating China’s foreign policy.While drawing attention from home and abroad,the regular press conferences hosted by Foreign Ministry spokespersons have been serving as effective channels for domestic and foreign audience to learn about China.At regular press conferences,spokespersons deliver their stances on various foreign affairs,some of which are related to the United States.In recent years,due to the deterioration of China-US relations,spokespersons have been constantly responding to the improper accusations and malicious comments from the US or the US government.When answering journalists’ questions on these issues,they are likely to clarify China’s diplomatic standpoints and positions by using abundant evaluative language.At present,Chinese is still not a universal language,which indicates that it is necessary to translate spokespersons’ remarks into English so as to showcase China’s attitudes.However,questions may arise here,for example,“Can the official translation provided by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs faithfully and completely restore the negative attitudes of the speakers?” “Will translators reshape the emotions,judgments,and appreciations of the original text?” “Can China’s diplomatic position be truthfully presented in the English translation?” So far,these questions are still under-explored in the field of translation studies.Based on a corpus of 241 bilingual texts selected from the regular press conferences hosted by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2020,this thesis adopts the ATTITUDE and GRADUATION systems,the two major sub-systems of the Appraisal Theory as the theoretical framework,and explores spokespersons’ negative attitudes towards the US in an attempt to see the variations between the original discourse and the translated discourse in terms of the representation of attitudinal resources in intensity,degree,and information value.It is found that spokespersons have more frequently applied judgmental resources,especially the resources of propriety to negatively appraise the US behaviors and its measures(Judgment)rather than to evaluate its things(Appreciation)or to express negative emotions(Affect).Particularly,whilst most translations can,to a large extent,present the original attitudes of the speakers,translation shifts do exist,including zero translation,up-scaled translation,and down-scaled translation.The results indicate that the down-scaling of translation is prominently distributed in translation shifts.The translations have mitigated the negative presentation of the US in the target text,in particular by weakening the Force of the negative appraisals.This research reveals that Foreign Ministry spokespersons use negative attitudinal resources to construct the profile of an undependable and irresponsible US,while the translations have appraised the US in a less negative way,which may have an impact on the interpersonal meaning between the speakers and the audience.In summary,through a corpus-based analysis of the negative attitudinal resources in Foreign Ministry spokespersons’ remarks on the US within the framework of the Appraisal Theory,this study aims to highlight the important role that translation plays in presenting China’s attitudes towards other countries.It is hoped that the research may serve as a basis for future studies in similar research fields and may shed some light on the translation of Chinese diplomatic discourse.