Repositioning Self and Others in the translation of China’s diplomatic responses

Positioning is influenced by social and political contexts and constructs them in return. In political discourse, positioning refers to the construction of identity and power relations, and the shifts of positioning could cause shifts in power and identities. In order to analyse the variations of positioning in diplomatic translation, this study chooses press conferences held by China’s Foreign Ministry and focuses on the responses and translation to the questions about COVID-19. It adopts Appraisal Theory together with framing strategies to check how appraisal resources are translated and how they affect the variations of positioning in the target text. By applying the Critical Discourse Analysis approach, the study finds that most subcategories of appraisal resources decreased in the target text. Different framing strategies were used with different distributions in each subcategory. These framing strategies repositioned the spokespersons and different participants involved in the press conferences and thus resulted in different diplomatic effects in the target text, which includes a more modest image of China, a clearer image of negative others, as well as an increase in the spokespersons’ power.