Diplomatic and policy translation
A diplomatic translation communicates a particular institution's statement, not the translator's independent assessment of the policy it describes. Identify the issuer, audience, genre and communicative purpose before choosing a register. A joint statement, a spokesperson's reply and an explanatory public article may use different conventions. Preserve who speaks, what is asserted and how strongly it is qualified. Translation fidelity does not require the translator personally to endorse the source's political position.
Maintain a project glossary with the source expression, chosen rendering, context, issuing authority and date. Published official translations are useful evidence for institutional terminology, but a familiar rendering is not automatically the only legitimate wording in every document. The expressions 人类命运共同体, 全过程人民民主 and 新质生产力 have established English usage in Chinese official publications. Verify the form required by the actual client and document rather than combining remembered fragments from different sources. Distinguish a preferred institutional name from an ordinary descriptive phrase.
Analyze the sentence before reproducing its rhythm. Chinese parallel clauses may need explicit grammatical subjects or a different hierarchy in English, but supplied subjects must be justified by the context. Do not turn a collective statement into a promise by an unidentified government body. Preserve negation, modality and the relation among background, action and result. A concise translation can remove empty repetition without deleting a substantive qualification, responsible actor or policy condition.
Treat metaphors as communication choices. A literal rendering may be obscure to the target audience, while an idiomatic substitution may import an unintended cultural association. Explain the source's force with a suitable expression or a restrained paraphrase. Compare candidate versions for fidelity, clarity and register rather than assuming that the longest or most emphatic English sentence is best. Diplomatic politeness also depends on context; a phrase described as constructive does not, by itself, prove that negotiations succeeded or failed.
Practise a complete translation and then a separate revision. Check terminology against the supplied reference, trace each proposition to the source and read the target text independently for naturalness. This English–Chinese foundations chapter does not reproduce a current official CATTI paper, establish a marking scheme or replace timed extended translation and feedback.