Knowledge Explication in Translating Chinese Political Terminology: A Corpus-Based Approach

Abstract

Political terminology represents a system of symbols, knowledge, and values that carry the political culture and ideological orientations of a state. According to the theory of trans-knowledge, translation is a process of “crossing borders” of knowledge. Therefore, the translation of political terminology becomes particularly important. Chinese political terminology, rooted in the longstanding Chinese culture and history, poses a significant challenge for those who lack the Chinese cultural context. Consequently, translation becomes a process that allows the manifestation of implicit knowledge underlying Chinese political terminology. Chinese political terminology, containing conceptual frameworks, is extensive and rich in content. The rich political philosophy of China is a particularly important aspect in the transmission of knowledge during translation. This study employs a corpus-based research method to create a corpus of Chinese political terminology with concepts in English, Chinese, and Russian, aiming to analyze the differences and similarities in knowledge transmission in English and Russian translations and draw conclusions about the framework structure of translating political terminology considering knowledge explication. Finally, a comparative analysis is conducted on the translations of “holistic approach to national security” into English and Russian to examine the structure. The results of this research can be applied to develop a methodology for translating political discourse in intercultural communication, be used in the training of professional translators, and serve as theoretical and empirical material for optimizing machine translation systems based on large language models.