La traduzione del linguaggio politico in Cina oggi: politiche del tradurre e scelte traduttive

In China, the translation of political language as a tool for the spread of a locally rooted ideological perspective belongs to a long and prestigious tradition, and has the function of a political action, often bound to a logic of rigorous fidelity to the original. The interest in translation, at the beginning of the 21st century, has been associated with the need to spread the country’s viewpoint to the world through a renewed translation effort. The effectiveness of a translation is evaluated based on the accuracy of linguistic equivalence and on a careful cultural mediation mechanism. Translation, thus structured, is identified as a necessary tool for expanding the ‘discursive power’ of the country at an international level. After a survey of the state-of-the-art of Chinese studies on the translation of political language, this contribution analyses some translation choices made in the official English version of the Resolution of the CPC Central Committee on the Major Achievements and Historical Experience of the Party over the Past Century (2021). The analysis of this authoritative product of official translation aims to verify whether and how – today – cultural mediation strategies oriented towards the non-Chinese reader are concretely applied in the rendering of political texts.