Binhua, Wang and Munday, Jeremy, eds. (2021): Advances in Discourse Analysis of Translation and Interpreting. London/New York: Routledge, 241 p.

Discourse analysis models have gained increasing popularity in translation and interpreting in the last decade and serve as a useful way of uncovering and explaining ideology hidden in the source and target texts. This popularity has been achieved through books, book chapters, conferences and different special issues of academic journals, such as Target, 27(3) (Munday and Zhang 2015) and Meta, 65(1) (Munday and Calzada Pérez 2020). These works present a good example of the interdisciplinary collaboration of discourse analysis (DA) and Translation and Interpreting Studies (T&I). I have found several influential works suggestive of this merging trend of DA and T&I Studies dating back to the 1990s (for example, Hatim and Mason 1990; 1997; Munday 2012). In 2016, Munday explained that effort would be needed to conduct “contrastive discourse analysis on non-European languages” (Munday 2016: 160). Binhua Wang and Jeremy Munday follow this idea, with Advances in Discourse Analysis of Translation and Interpreting being a recent attempt at this path of exploration.

With this new book, the editors remind us that DA has a valuable role to play in political discourse translation and interpreting, news translation as well as multimodal and intersemiotic analysis in translation. Their aim is to “further explore how linguistic analysis can be linked to the wider target text function and how socio-cultural studies can be better validated with detailed textual and discoursal analysis” (p. 1). To this end, the two editors selected works that use different theoretical models and a wide array of methodologies. The book is divided into four parts: uncovering positioning and ideology in translation and interpreting (Chapters 1, 2, 3 and 4), linking linguistic analysis with socio-cultural interpretation (Chapters 5 and 6), discourse analysis of news translation (Chapters 7, 8 and 9) and analysis of multimodal and intersemiotic discourse in translation (Chapters 10 and 11).

In Chapter 1, Binhua Wang adopts a corpus-based discourse analysis of the presentation, re-presentation and perception of a Chinese political concept (the “Belt and Road Initiative”). In his study, Wang compares keyword lists and provides a thesaurus sketch of the top keywords in the corpus. It is found that the positive image of the Belt and Road Initiative is mainly constructed in the re-presented discourse and that neutral and negative images are mainly constructed in the perceived discourse. This study sheds new light on the role of discourse analysis in image building and on the mediation role of translation in international media communication.

In Chapter 2, Fei Gao examines how interpreters manipulate evaluative resources to reconstruct a target text discourse. To this end, Gao uses Martin and White’s (2005) appraisal theory as her theoretical model. It is found that the attitude and graduation categories show evaluative shifts in simultaneous conference interpreting. Gao believes that the translation shifts strengthen the positive values of the source texts (STs) and mitigate the negative values of the STs as well as “risky” discourse replete with negativity.

In Chapter 3, Chonglong Gu adopts a corpus-based CDA of the interpreters’ mediation of Beijing’s version of truth, fact and reality. The data employed here are the transcribed bilingual premier’s press conference in China (1998-2017). Believing that the metadiscourse markers this/the fact that is suggestive of the speaker/interpreter’s stance, Gu conducts a concordance analysis of this/the fact that using the software Antconc and then presents a very detailed comparative analysis of the isolated concordance lines of this/the fact that and their Chinese counterparts. Gu’s analysis leads him to conclude that the interpreters’ recurrent addition of metadiscourse markers helps “the Chinese premier’s already authoritative remarks appear even more convincing, trustworthy and rhetorically forceful” (p. 51). This study highlights the interpreters’ agency in voicing Beijing’s discourse in a more persuasive and emphatic way.

Believing that military interpreting unfolds in complex contexts, Qianhua Ouyang and Qiliang Xu, in Chapter 4, adopt Baker’s (2006) four-layer typology of narrative (ontological, public, conceptual and meta-narratives) as an analytic tool. Their analyses of conceptual and meta-narratives of China-US relations and their surveys of China-US military relations lead them to argue that competitive narratives exist. For example, the public, conceptual and meta-narratives of bilateral relations are negative. By contrast, the public narrative of the military event is in general positive. Then, they provide illustrative examples to show that interpreters in both armies “strive for the best communicative effect possible” (p. 75) through strategies such as explaining acronyms or technical terms. The significant contribution of this chapter is the authors’ endeavor to link interpreters’ decision-making mechanisms with the social and cultural contexts that influence interpreters’ choices in military events.

In Chapter 5, Hailing Yu and Canzhong Wu explore the interpersonal and experiential functions of the first-person plural we in the English translations of the Annual Work Report of the Chinese government (2000-2019). To this end, the authors use Halliday’s (1994) Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) as their main theoretical framework. It is found that the translators tend to add we in the English translations. The interpersonal function of we is explored in terms of mood type, polarity and modality. They argue that the use of we in combination with modulation (will, must, should, have to, need to) suggests that the Chinese government is determined to build a better future for China with a higher sense of volition and obligation. The experiential function of we is examined from the systems of agency and transitivity. They conclude that the translators tend to assign agentive roles to we in material processes, helping to construct a more active and dynamic image of the Chinese government/people in the English translations. The significant contribution is the authors’ systematic application of SFL in the English translations of Chinese political reports.

In Chapter 6, Xin Li and Ranran Zhang analyse the government press conference interpreting (2016-2018) produced by experienced in-house interpreters from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The aim of this study is to explore how the interpreters fulfil their gatekeeping role in interpreting potentially face-threatening questions raised by journalists. The detailed analysis of the STs and TTs is conducted within the framework of SFL and Appraisal Theory. It is found that graduation resources, engagement or attitude markers and the system of mood show translation shifts. For instance, force-raising graduation resources are omitted, engagement or attitude markers are added and the mood types are modified. Finally, they discuss possible ideological factors behind the interpreters’ gatekeeping role and linguistic choices.

The next three chapters (7, 8 and 9) shift to studies on discourse analysis of news translation. The case studies in these chapters are not “news in a narrow sense” (Schäffner 2012: 871), but the representation of Xi Jinping’s international political speeches (Chapter 7), the 2014 Hong Kong protests (Chapter 8) and the South China Sea Dispute (Chapter 9) as reported in the Chinese, British and US news media. In Chapter 7, Li Pan and Chuxin Huang analyse Xi Jinping’s two keynote speeches at international conferences, both of which were delivered in Chinese, translated into English and disseminated in the international news media. Pan and Huang aim to compare the metaphors signalled in Xi Jinping’s original Chinese speeches with their English translations. In order to do so, they compare the original Chinese speeches and their English translations, drawing on Martin and White’s (2005) Appraisal Theory. It is found that the stance expressed through the quoted metaphors in media discourse generally diverges from that in the original speeches. This study sheds light on the media’s translation of political metaphors and contextualisation of political speeches.

In Chapter 8, Yuan Ping’s corpus-based CDA study aims to examine how the 2014 Hong Kong protests are represented in the translations of news articles in the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, British and US news media. Yuan Ping compares the high-frequency words, keywords, concordances and collocations of the original news with those of their translated discourse. The top 25 keywords in the translated news discourse are divided into different semantic groups according to the UCREL Semantic Analysis System, with the aim of exploring the similarities and differences of the translated discourse in different media outlets. Additionally, the author examines the translation shifts as well as the ideological stances of news media. It is found that the different attitudes of the media or the translators towards the movement are revealed through the comparative examination of the semantic prosodies of the keyword movement and its Chinese equivalent 运动. Yuan Ping explains these different attitudes towards the movement with reference to the ideological stances of the media outlets.

In Chapter 9, Binjian Qin analyses news reports on the South China Sea Dispute and their translations into English. Qin explores the representation of China in the re-narration of news discourse. To this end, he combines Martin and White’s (2005) Appraisal Theory and Baker’s (2006) Narrative Theory to explore his corpus. The software program NVivo 11 is used to build a corpus of Chinese-English news and to identify and calculate evaluative resources of attitudinal realisations, value positions and appraised target (China). The attitudinal deviation patterns are demonstrated in different reframing strategies (selective appropriation, ambiguity framing and framing by labelling). It is found that China is framed as “the more powerful side in the dispute which holds a tough position and makes no promise” in the Chinese original (p. 183) and that China is reframed in the translated news discourse through toning down and blurring the positivity, in order to solve the dispute through negotiation.

The last two chapters focus on analysis of multimodal and intersemiotic discourse in translation. In Chapter 10, drawing on Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) visual social semiotics, Xi Chen examines the translated public notices in Macao from a multimodal perspective. To this end, Chen conducts a study on three different corpora: (1) public notices with different multimodal representations; (2) multimodal public notices with photograph images; (3) multimodal public notices with cartoon images. This study sheds light on “the design and translation of public notices in the Chinese mainland” (p. 209).

In Chapter 11, drawing on an SFL perspective, Marina Manfredi explores the representation of multicultural identity in dubbed Italian versions of sitcoms. In order to do this, she chooses examples of English dialogues in the dubbed Italian sitcoms. Identity is examined on the phonological level (accents) and the lexico-grammatical level (lexical choices concerning cultural traditions, greetings, proverbs and idioms) using a functional, user-oriented model. She argues that strategies of localisation and neutralisation will “eliminate crucial aspects related to cultural identity,” and that preservation of language variation might “lead to incomprehension and non-natural effect in dialogues” (p. 221).

Overall, Advances in Discourse Analysis of Translation and Interpreting is a great book, as shown in the following perspectives. First, with illustrative examples of contrastive discourse analysis of the STs and TTs, the book explores how socio-cultural studies can be better validated with detailed textual and discoursal analysis. Second, it provides a very convincing argument for the role of translators/interpreters in political discourse translation and news translation. Third, it presents and emphasises different methodologies, corpus tools and corpora. Some studies adopt a corpus-based discursive approach, where discourse analyses are underpinned by empirical studies of translation and interpretation and which maximise the potential for triangulating qualitative and quantitative analysis in translation and interpreting studies. The corpus tools involved in this book include Sketch Engine (Binhua Wang, Yuan Ping), Antconc (Chonglong Gu), NVivo 11 (Binjian Qin) as well as SysConc and SysFan (Hailing Yu and Canzhong Wu). Fourth, the pertinence of SFL, Appraisal Theory and Narrative Theory to translation and interpretation studies is evidenced by most of the contributions in this book. For Binjian Qin, a new model combining Appraisal Theory and Narrative Theory is created for the analysis of China’s representation in the reframed news discourse. For Marina Manfredi, a SFL perspective is merged with translation strategies to explore whether the multicultural identity is preserved in dubbed Italian versions of sitcoms. These models can increase the cooperation between DA and T&I, thus moving the discipline forward.