Translating rhetorical hype in Chinese political discourse: a genre-based corpus study of Chinese government white papers
Abstract
Drawing on genre analysis and corpus-based translation studies, this study examines rhetorical hype in Chinese government White Papers published between 2020 and 2023 and their official English translations. Rhetorical hype is defined as evaluative and promotional language that heightens the perceived importance, novelty, effectiveness, scope, or desirability of policies, actions, knowledge claims, and accomplishments, with its individual lexical realizations termed hyperbolic items. Using a sentence-level move scheme adapted from previous genre studies, the study identifies seven move types and focuses on the three most extensive moves: Detailing Actions, Presenting Epistemic Knowledge, and Presenting Accomplishments. Hyperbolic items were identified using a candidate lexicon compiled from previous studies and lexical resources, followed by contextual validation and examination of aligned source–target units. Descriptive frequency analysis was combined with qualitative analysis of translation patterns across the three moves. The English translations contain fewer hyperbolic items overall than the Chinese source texts. Presenting Accomplishments exhibits the highest normalized frequency of hyperbolic items in both corpora, whereas the relative distribution of such items in Detailing Actions and Presenting Epistemic Knowledge differs between the source and target texts. Qualitative analysis reveals three major translation patterns—attenuation, retention, and amplification—with attenuation predominating in the sampled data. The findings indicate that the English translations display a more restrained evaluative profile than the Chinese source texts, a pattern compatible with target-oriented institutional mediation. By integrating rhetorical move analysis with the analysis of evaluative language, this study offers a more context-sensitive account of rhetorical hype in political discourse translation and demonstrates the value of combining genre-based and corpus-based approaches to institutional translation.