News translation as a site of framing Chinese identity: The case of Yeeyan Sport

Abstract

This article examines the various devices which the translators of Yeeyan Sport employ to reframe certain narratives of China and Chinese sport that were encoded in the Western media during the convening of the 2012 London Olympics. They range from selective appropriation, labelling, temporal and spatial framing, to repositioning of participants. In so doing, we are enabled to understand the hold of ‘positioning’ over linguistic production, and particularly how the translators’ claimed position can conflict with their position which is performed in their action of framing and which is embodied in the narratives they construct in translation. It also calls attention to the role of news translation in reconstructing national identity, and particularly, how translation of sports news can be infused with ethnocentric undertones.