China: Confessions Of A Propagandist

[Harold Schiffman]

Confessions Of A Propagandist

Chris O'Brien


While foreign visitors to Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou see mainly
the glitz of a booming economy, listening to China's rulers provides
an entirely different perspective on the nation. There are few things
left untouched by the country's furious rush to modernize, but one is
China's official government language, where the Communist Party
remains hopelessly devoted to cryptic Marxist code.

"The three closenesses" and "The four steadfasts" are just a couple of
the catchphrases championed by President Hu Jintao that are guaranteed
to send English spell-check programs whirring to life. "Eight honors
and eight disgraces" is another party favorite. The government views
such buzzwords as essential tools in maintaining its influence over
the morality of the people. Outsiders see them as clumsy, archaic and
easy to mock.

Journalists in the foreign language departments of the government's
official Xinhua News Agency have the unenviable task of translating
the untranslatable, trying to make the Chinese government's awkward
phraseology palatable for the rest of the world. I sympathize
wholeheartedly, as I spent two years as a "language polisher" for the
agency's English service. My role ranged from fine-tuning grammar to
completely rewriting entire stories to make them sound as if they
could have been written by a human being.

In celebration of "International Children's Songs Day," for example,
the propaganda ministry thought it would be a good idea to create a
humorless platform for stuffy academics to bemoan the overshadowing of
"simple and inspiring" songs from the revolution by "shallow and
uninspiring" pop music.

A few edits later and lines like "Chinese adults are striving to
create more songs fit to children and do all efforts to encourage the
country's next generations to sing their own songs" were given the
boot. I subbed in more tabloid-friendly offerings like "Chinese
literature buffs lambaste pop culture in time for Children's Songs
Day."

Sometimes, I left the language in all its stilted glory to ensure no
one would get the false impression that "officialspeak" was in danger
of morphing into something more natural. After all, I wouldn't want to
get in the way of a senior official's attempts to emphasize his
commitment to the people through abstractions and tedious repetition,
like in this catchy paragraph:

"The senior Party official urged local officials to pay attention to
the life of people and try to improve the life of the people, so as to
build closer ties between the Party and the people. He urged local
officials to be serious in resolving protruding problems that have
brought losses to the interests of the people."

It was often impossible to improve the copy anyway, particularly when
it came to the statements released by the diplomatic desk, which were
routinely drier than a rehab clinic. These reports on talks between
China and other countries were all designed to say, in the vaguest
terms, exactly the same thing: absolutely nothing. A Valentine's card
sent by the Foreign Ministry would read something like this: "Dear
Country X, We have enjoyed a deepening strategic partnership of
cooperation in recent months and have reached consensus on a number of
issues. We should hold hands and strive to take the bilateral
relations to new heights in order to create a mutually beneficial,
win-win situation."

China's propaganda department has a long history of antagonizing the
international community with its words. Regular rants about the
"splittist" Dalai Lama--usually after he has a conversation with a
head of state--do more to foster support for the Tibetan leader than
to turn the tide against him. The veiled threats of military action
against Taiwan also never fail to rankle. The trouble is, everyone now
expects these fiery remonstrations; to suddenly tone down the tirades
would be like saying the Dalai Lama is not so bad or Taiwan can have
independence after all.

While the highly formulaic nature of Chinese government rhetoric makes
for stodgy news stories, academics rejoice in its rigidity, analyzing
the language to predict subtle shifts in party ideology. Hong Kong
University's China Media Project constructed a league table charting
the frequency with which President Hu used certain buzzwords in his
report to the 17th Communist Party Congress last October. "Socialism
with Chinese characteristics" thrashed the opposition with 52
references, comfortably defeating "scientific development," "opening
up and reform" and "harmony."

A few plotted graphs and some articulate reasoning later, the China
Media Project experts concluded that the party's basic direction for
the next five years was "first and foremost a reaffirmation of the
path of reform and opening in response to the left's opposition and
call for a turn back." Simple as that. For the rest of the world,
however, it was anyone's guess what Hu was trying to say, and the
uncertainty was reflected in contrasting headlines. Following the
speech, Agence France Presse went with "Hu flags political reform for
China." The New York Times plumped for "China's leader closes door to
reform."

David Bandurski, a project researcher with the China Media Project,
confesses to an obsession with Chinese political terminology, or ti
fa. "It's by no means a perfect science, but I believe we can decode
policy shifts--or shifts in intensity--by looking at how ti fa are
employed," he says. Just coming up with an official English
translation of Hu's speech was an almighty task in itself. One of
Xinhua's old hands in the English department was sent off to an
undisclosed location for two months to work on it with a crack team of
Chinese English experts. His colleagues joked that he had been sent to
Hu's concentration camp.

There, they debated the intricacies of how to express communist
ideology in a not-too-communist way. For good measure, they changed
"scientific concept of development," a term coined a year and a half
earlier, to "scientific outlook on development." One can only imagine
the heated debate behind that tinkering. One Xinhua staffer I worked
with insisted that the Chinese government should modernize its
communication skills to keep up with reality. "The language is too
rigid and contains too many rules. It restricts creativity," she
said.For now, though, the language of "socialism with Chinese
characteristics" shows little sign of evolving. And when it does,
there will no doubt still be the North Korean state media to keep us
entertained.

Chris O'Brien, a writer based in Beijing, worked for two years as a
language polisher at the Xinhua News Agency. He blogs at Beijing
Newspeak.

http://www.forbes.com/technology/2008/02/21/chinese-english-translation-tech-cx_co_language_sp08_0221govspeak.html

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