Chonglong Gu

Harbin is a city in Northeast China that rose to prominence as a result of the construction of the Chinese Eastern Railway in a context of Russian imperial expansion. Affectionately known as “the Moscow of the East,” Harbin’s history, architecture, food, and language bear strong Russian/Soviet influences. Given the joint Chinese and Russian/European influences, Harbin represents a dynamic, hybridized, and liminal space. Adopting the conceptual lenses of “chronotope” and “polyphony,” this study explores the linguistic and semiotic landscape of the famous Saint Sophia Cathedral (an Eastern Orthodox church) and Zhongyang Street/Central Street (a Russian-style pedestrian street) in Harbin. Historically, these areas once featured highly Russified linguistic/semiotic landscape, which later saw significant de-Russification as many Russians left and a Chinese identity was emphasized. In recent decades, Russian linguistic and semiotic elements are deliberately foregrounded and strategically employed in a context of tourism, commerce, and business. Drawing on a corpus of photographic data, the study examines the combination and orchestration of multilingual signs (i.e., Chinese, English, and Russian), investigates issues of translation, and explores how the multilingual signs, various architectural styles (of Russian/European origins), various products (e.g., Russian-style khleb, kvass, and Matryoshka dolls) and spatiotemporal elements give rise to dynamic semiotic assemblages. Its findings reveal how such multimodal and multisemiotic ensembles construct a sense of authenticity and exoticness and importantly contribute to the commodification of Harbin. These lead to a diverse and cosmopolitan image, a hybrid East-meets-West urban identity and a layered urban palimpsest. This interdisciplinary study contributes to scholarship in multilingualism, linguistic/semiotic landscape, the commodification of language, multimodal discourse analysis, urban studies, urban geography, and sociolinguistics.

If the important role of written translation in the construction and contestation of knowledge and narratives remains largely under-explored, then the part played by interpreting and interpreters is even less examined in knowledge construction and story-telling. At a time when Beijing increasingly seeks to bolster its discursive power and have the Chinese story properly told, the interpreter-mediated and televised Premier-Meets-the-Press conferences constitute a typical discursive event andregime of truthin articulating China’s officially sanctioned “voice.” Discursive in nature, the institutionalised event permits Beijing to construct a desired version of truth, fact and narrative in front of the more vociferous and dominant West. As an attempt to employ digital humanities (DH) methods to real-world language use, this corpus-based CDA study explores the press conference interpreters’ agency and mediation in rendering key concepts and discourses (e.g., ECONOMY and REFORM) constitutive of the broader Reform and Opening-up meta-narrative, which legitimises China’s political and economic systems, developments, policies and positions in the post-1978 era. The interpreters are found to maintain and often further reinforce Beijing’s discourse in English at various levels. Apart from indicating issues of institutional alignment, this study points to interpreters’ agency in communicating beyond national borders, (re)constructing political and institutional knowledge, counterbalancing the naturalised and taken-for-granted Western narratives, and contributing to the shifting East-West power differentials discursively. This study highlights the significance of interpreters as indispensable (re)tellers of the Chinese story in an increasingly mediat(is)ed world, where the interpreted discourse is routinely quotedverbatimon various platforms and taken for granted as the correct version of Beijing’s official “voice.”

ABSTRACTThe pragmatist reform and opening-up in 1978 has revolutionised the way China communicates internally and engages with the outside world. Firmly embedded within this broader historical context, the interpreter-mediated and televised Premier-Meets-the-Press conferences are a high-profile institutional event in China. At this discursive event, the Chinese premier – ranked second in China’s political hierarchy – is put in the international media limelight, answering journalists’ questions on a range of topics. The section involving the interpreters’ rendering of journalists’ questions is triadic and dynamic and represents a particularly interesting site of ideological contestation, which can be conceptualised profitably using Bakhtin’s concept dialogised heteroglossia. Drawing on a corpus containing 20 years’ press conference data between 1998 and 2017, this CDA study interrogates the interpreters’ agency, particularly in constructing the Chinese government’s image when rendering journalists’ questions. Despite the commonplace assumptions of interpreters being impartial with little agency, the government-affiliated interpreters are found to actively engage in facework and image construction. This leads to a discursive pattern described in Van Dijk’s ideological square, which involves further emphasising and foregrounding the positive elements yet de-emphasising and mitigating the negative elements about Beijing.

The sociopolitical and cultural evolution as a result of the Reform and Opening up in 1978, facilitated not least by the inexorable juggernaut of globalization and technological advancement, has revolutionized the way China engages domestically and interacts with the outside world. The need for more proactive diplomacy and open engagement witnessed the institutionalization of the interpreter-mediated premier's press conferences. Such a discursive event provides a vital platform for China to articulate its discourse and rebrand its image in tandem with the profound changes signaled by the Dengist reform. This chapter investigates critically how political press conference interpreting and interpreters' agency in China are impacted in relation to such dramatic transformations. It is revealed that, while interpreters are confronted with seemingly conflicting expectations, in actual practice they are often able to negotiate a way as highly competent interpreting professionals with the additional missions of advancing China's global engagement and safeguarding China's national interests.