A Report On The E-C Translation Of American News Reports On Xinjiang Cotton Incident From The Perspective Of Attitude In Appraisal Theory

On March 24,2021,the Communist Youth League singled out and criticized Swedish clothing brand H&M on its Weibo account for fabricating rumors about Xinjiang,China.H&M said in its official statement that it would no longer use Xinjiang cotton or recruit employees from Xinjiang,and expressed deep concerns over reports of so-called “forced labor”.Actually,is is not only H&M but some members of BCI like Nike,Uniqlo,Burberry and others have also issued similar statements to boycott Xinjiang cotton.Chinese celebrities ended their contracts with the involved brands and Chinese consumers also called for a boycott of these brands and companies.Xinjiang cotton incident has undoubtedly drawn great attention at home and abroad.Media in both China and America have reported the incident widely while they hold different views on the matter.This report selects 10 news reports on Xinjiang cotton incident from The New York Times,The Associated Press and Cable News Network as the research corpus to explore the stance and attitude of American media towards China and Xinjiang cotton.Under the guidance of the Attitude system in Appraisal Theory,the author pays great attention to both Inscribed Attitude and Invoked Attitude in news reports to unfold media’s attitude and viewpoint.At first,the distribution of inscribed attitudinal resources are counted and the invoked attitudinal resources in these selected news reports are recognized carefully.Then,the author explains how these two kinds of attitudinal resources are used to express writers’ or appraisers’ stances and positions.Finally,the author analyzes how to properly deal with both types of attitudinal resources in translation and reproduces attitudes and viewpoints in news reports.According to statistics,it is found that the source text is dominated by inscribed attitudinal resources and shows a negative trend.When it comes to translation,the literal translation,free translation,amplification and domestication are mainly adopted by the author to deal with these attitudinal resources in the source text.By selecting the hotly debated news reports on Xinjiang cotton incident as the corpus in this translation practice,the author attempts to apply Appraisal Theory to social problems,which expands the application scope to some extent and enriches the application of Appraisal Theory in news translation practice.Additionally,by analyzing both inscribed and invoked attitudinal resources in the source text,the media’s attitude can be unfolded comprehensively.The author hopes that this practice report can bring some new enlightenment to the translations of news reports and provide reference for improving the quality of English news translation.