“Telling China’s story well”? Tifa, translation, and discursive power in the Quotidiano del Popolo

Examining China’s growing efforts to affirm its ‘discoursive power’ (话语权) in the Euro-Mediterranean region, this paper presents a case study of the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) communication of its ‘external publicity’ (对外宣传) via news translation. The study focuses on translation strategies of the Italian version (Quotidiano del Popolo) of the official Party newspaper 人民日报 to investigate the implications and effects of translation shifts involving tifa (提法, political formulations and fixed expressions). A qualitative textual analysis applied the Descriptive Translation three-stage methodology to a corpus of articles on the Beijing 2022 Olympic and Paralympic Games, with reference to ‘constraint’ and ‘relation’ in translation. Understatement, omission, and indirect translation were identified as translation shifts in the corpus, suggesting ideological tensions behind most such shifts. While the first two modes help downplay China’s geo-political ambition, the last results in ineffective translation that can obstruct the intended political message, hindering the ability to ‘tell China’s story well’ (讲好中国故事). This study seeks to elucidate the complexity and political intricacies of ‘correctly’ receiving and replicating the Chinese political message in a foreign language other than English.