Discursive Construction Of China’s National Image In The English Translation Of Political Documents

In the context of globalization,national image has become a hot issue concerned by all countries.Due to the difference of political ideology and conflicts in national interests,China’s image is often shaped negative by Western mainstream media and far from the positive image that we intend to establish.China’s national image is often distorted and misunderstood,and this results in a negative impact on our participation in international affairs and cooperation.The construction of national image includes “material level” and “symbolic level”,and this study focuses on the “symbolic level”.Discursive construction through linguistic symbols is crucial to the national image.Therefore,the discursive study on China’s national image has attracted great attention among Chinese scholars.Among the current studies on national image,more are based on original texts,less on translated texts;more on news and literary texts,while less on political texts;and more studies on “other-constructed” images,and less on “self-constructed” images;more on construction results,and less attention to the influence on the construction.Therefore,this study chooses texts under the theme of international communication and cooperation in the English translation of political document Xi Jinping: The Governance of China II to study the “self-construction” of China’s image.National image serves as a cognitive subject understanding and evaluation of a country,in fact,is a kind of ideology.Corpus-based Critical Translation Studies intends to explore the interactive relationship between translation and ideology,with modality as one of the research paths.Modality embodies the speaker’s responsibility and obligation to the discourse content,indicates relations and social distance of both sides,therefore it shows rich ideological significance.From the perspective of Corpus-based Critical Translation Studies,this study chooses modality as the research path,adopts a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods,and aims to answer the following three questions: 1)How are modalities distributed in the target text and original text? 2)How are modalities re-distributed in the translation? 3)What is the significance of modality re-distribution for the discursive construction of national image?The main findings of this study are summarized below:1)Modality distribution displays an obvious gap between the original text and target text,high-value modal verbs occupies the largest proportion in the original text while medium-value modal verbs are the most frequently used in the target text;2)Re-distribution of modality mainly presents three modes,which are: modal equivalence,modal amplification and modal adjustment(including modal degradation and modal upgradation);3)Modality re-distribution presents ideological meaning potentials in discourse,posing positive impacts on the discursive construction of the national image in the following aspects: establishing China’s national principle and stance;enhancing China’s presence as national image subject;weakening strong factors in the discourse of national image;increasing the authenticity and creditability in the discourse.This study analyzed modal re-distribution and its enlightenment on the discursive construction of the national image.It not only provides positive enlightenment for the discursive construction of national image,but also provides new ideas for the translation of political documents.