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Newspaper Research Journal

A statistical intra-
2018, Vol. 39(3) 326­–338
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genre analysis DOI: 10.1177/0739532918796231

https://doi.org/10.1177/0739532918796231
journals.sagepub.com/home/nrj

of cross-national
environmental
news translation
By Meng Ji

Abstract
This study investigates the instrumental role of translated
environmental news in informing public opinions on environmental
issues among Chinese-speaking communities. Its contribution to
methodology is exploring the automatic corpus annotation tools,
that is, semantic analysis system. Its contribution to theory is
identifying and distinguishing among three recurrent sub-news-types
of translated environmental news published on BBC China, that
is, governance; international relations and environmental science.
Discourse features attributed to these subtypes of environmental
news underscore BBC China’s reporting styles and strategies and
largely explain its wide appeal and credibility among the target
audiences.

Keywords
corpus linguistics, news translation, environmental news, semantic analysis

Ji is an associate professor at School of Languages and Cultures,

University of Sydney. Ji is the corresponding author:
christine.ji@sydney.edu.au.
Ji 327

T
he BBC China is one of the few Western digital news outlets that have a wide
accessibility and sustained impact on changing public opinions in China. It
practices a mixed news sourcing and reporting system that results in wide
appeal and credibility in China. With a specific news service focus on Chinese-
speaking communities, BBC China selects and serves news materials from a variety of
sources in original Chinese or other languages. The appeal of BBC China to a very
mixed Chinese-speaking audience, especially those residing inside of China, stems
from its perceived independent and balanced view on contentious issues such as those
related to the China’s social and economic development and resulting environmental
impacts. For years, the British news outlet provides an important news source for
those with limited access to original English news, particularly to readers who can
read only in Chinese, despite the increased English literacy among young generations.
More importantly, it serves as a powerful tool to promote a well-sourced set of ideas
to inform a large and growing Chinese-speaking audience.
BBC China fills a gap in environmental reporting in a country that faces numerous
environmental problems.1 BBC China also illustrates the growing importance of the
design and delivery of localized digital news in the target languages, with a view to bet-
ter engaging distinct audiences in the development and exchange of social values and
ideas across languages and cultures. A growing body of research focuses on environ-
mental news, particularly cross-national studies that explore the nexus between environ-
mental news discourse and explanatory social/cultural factors.2 The current study
advances this growing research trend by focusing on a particular type of trans-national
environmental news, that is, the purposeful translation and redesign of environmental
news for cultural and language-specific audiences with BBC China as an example.
The highlight of translation of news underpins the growing importance attached to
localized digital media amid the latest waves of globalization and cross-lingual com-
munication.3 Translation represents a particular type of discourse and language vari-
ety, which differs from original writing. By definition, it involves two languages and
sociocultural systems, known as the source language and target language.4 The com-
plexity of translation lies in the development of strategies to facilitate the interaction
between distinct language and cultural systems.5 The study of discourse patterns in
translation helps identify communication strategies in specialized translation genres
such as economics, finance, business, news materials and so on. Following this line of
translation research, this study explores dimensions of translated environmental news
with data collected from BBC China.
Not surprisingly, a considerable amount of news published on BBC China is
selected from that originally published on BBC UK. However, variations in terms of
language styles, framing techniques and visibility level of specific news content
between the two reporting systems exist. As a result, the popularity of BBC China and
its sustained impact on Chinese-speaking audiences cannot be explained solely by its
implicit connection with BBC UK. This is because, despite the influence and value of
original English news, a literal translation and less focused reporting approach would
necessarily receive criticism from the large Chinese-speaking audience with a very
complex ethic, cultural, ideological and age structure.
This study explores intriguing issues through the development of new analytical
instruments and provides a useful and innovative focal point for global environmental
news analysis:
328 Newspaper Research Journal 39(3)

What are the translation and editorial strategies developed by BBC China to inform
its language-specific audiences over complex issues such as climate change?
Are there any consistent patterns regarding the framing and reporting of environ-
mental events with impact in different areas of social life?

The analysis draws on methodologies widely used in translation studies, environ-

mental media and corpus linguistics.

Research Methodologies
Three Types of Translated Environmental News
The first stage in the study of translated environmental news on BBC China is col-
lecting relevant data from the news website. BBC China represents a hybrid news
reporting system that incorporates news collected from a variety of sources, including
translated and adapted news originally published on the parent website BBC UK;
news collected from other national news outlets such as Nikkei News (Japan); The
Australian; CNN (the United States); Le Monde (France), Moscow Times (Russia) and
major Chinese news outlets like China Daily and People’s Daily. The automatic
retrieval of translated environmental news on climate change benefited from the paral-
lel reporting system of BBC China. By inputting key search words such as global
warming, climate change with a space followed by the Chinese character YI (which
means translation), a number of news entries came up. The automatically returned
news entries were then screened manually based on degree of relevance to this study.
News entries that discussed marginally the input key words were excluded to stream-
line the analysis.
More weight was given to news entries that dealt specifically with the social impact
and implications of environmental issues. Discussions on unobtrusive issue-areas such
as climate change and global warming were deliberately included in the news search
alongside investigative reporting on environmental deterioration that prevails in
Chinese environmental news.6 The inclusion of news reporting on climate change
aims to explore how foreign news outlets such as BBC China foster an increased social
awareness and scientific attitude among the Chinese audience toward environmental
phenomena such as global climate change, given that in-depth discussions about sci-
entific and policy perspectives on environmental changes in Chinese news media are
largely still developing.7 The data retrieval and filtering process produced a relatively
small yet representative list of environmental news articles published on BBC China
in the five-year period 2009 to 2014.
The total number of news articles—exclusively translated and abridged news and
directly related to environmental issues—was 87 with each article ranging between 400
and 2,000 character words. News stories were transcribed into text files and labeled
individually. Based on thematic topics covered, this material were classified into three
recurrent categories, which are (1) environmental governance; (2) international relations
and (3) environmental science. These three topics and highlighted environmental news
categories exhibit consistent patterns in the translated news database and they reflect the
growing concerns around environmental issues in the Chinese news media.8
The first type of environmental news, governance, deals with social impacts of
environmental issues at a national level.9 It is not limited to the management and
Ji 329

handling of environmental problems by Chinese governments (at all levels) but

extends to include reporting on national policies, legislation and high-profile events of
environmental protection in other parts of the world, especially in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Russia, India and Japan. The distinctly wide breadth of reporting
on environmental governance at the national level enables audiences to develop their
critical understanding and evaluation of the effectiveness and deficiencies of national
environmental policies in the global context.10
The second type of environmental news is that with international dimension. In the
transcription and classification of translated BBC China news, it became clear that
environmental issues were often framed within a highly dynamic international setting.
Environmental issues provide an important focus of debate among countries in terms
of responsibility attribution and distribution of resources to combat environmental
deterioration. This international environmental news, an integral part of BBC China’s
journalism, prepares a globally minded Chinese-speaking audience, especially young
generations, to look at environmental issues beyond national borders.
The news in the environmental science category dealt with the latest scientific
breakthroughs, advances made with new energies on an industrial scale and impacts of
extreme weather conditions on national economies and people’s daily lives. If the first
two types of environmental news are seen as frames in the social domain, environmen-
tal science news is essentially a natural frame that engages the public in the scientific
and scholarly debates of global climate change. This type of environmental news
receives less attention in national news reporting inside of China, as the majority of the
general public accepts, to varying degrees, climate change as natural results of environ-
mental deterioration that come at the cost of the country’s economic development.

Automatic Sentiment Analysis and Corpus

Data Processing
The sentiment analysis tool used in this study was developed by the Centre for
Computer Corpus Research on Language of the University of Lancaster, United
Kingdom. It is known as USAS. USAS has a multitier structure that covers 21 major
discourse fields and domains organized alphabetically. Within each field, subdivisions
are provided based on the sentiment (especially subjective and evaluative) properties
of terms and expressions classified in each major domain. The Chinese version of
USAS (CH-USAS) draws upon the English taxonomy of sentiment analysis. It was
used to annotate translated environmental news from BBC China.
The advantages of using sentiment analysis tools such as USAS, available in many
languages, are multiple. First, it is a useful experiment with computational corpus
annotation, which has proved valid and productive with different languages, from
those using the Latin alphabet to character-based Asian languages. This helps to over-
come technical and linguistic difficulties involved in cross-lingual and cross-cultural
analysis. USAS represents a higher level language processing system, as computer
analytical systems such as part-of-speech tagging and syntactic parsing are often
language-dependent, especially with noncognate or typologically distinct languages.
The deployment of an annotation tool that is valid across languages enables the devel-
opment of theoretical and hypothetical models in different contexts to fill in a critical
gap in cross-national environmental news analysis.
330 Newspaper Research Journal 39(3)

Second, the use of corpus annotation tools like USAS is instrumental in processing
large-scale databases to extract important quantitative information. The statistical pro-
cessing of news media data is a prerequisite to conceptualizing and developing theo-
retical constructs such as meta-frames and measure scales for empirical news media
studies. With a small set of news events, the result obtained or the conclusion drawn
are necessarily circumscribed and insufficient to yield insights into the relation such as
co-variation, changing dependence relationship between social and cultural factors,
moderating and mediating variables and the framing and editorial strategies devised
for environmental reporting purposes.
After collecting translations of environmental news from BBC China’s website, the
raw news data were first entered into the automatic tagging system of CH-USAS. Next,
they underwent a thorough manual screening to retain tagging items that were relevant
for this study. Before the statistical analysis, it is important to elaborate on the purpose
of the quantitative analysis that follows the collection of translated news data. Two
main types of statistics are particularly relevant to the current study, that is, pattern
detection and feature discrimination for classification purposes. Again, this study’s first
aim was to identify BBC China’s reporting strategies through a quantitative analysis of
recurrent textual patterns in translated environmental news. Recurrent textual patterns
discovered help to study how the selection and translation of environmental news
enables BBC China to inform and mobilize its targeted Chinese-speaking audiences
about environmental issues and the social ramifications of climate change events.
Again, this study’s second aim was to highlight textual features that effectively
discriminate different types of environmental news. This involves identifying a small
set of textual features drawing upon the result of sentiment analysis to explain differ-
ences among the three subgenres of translated environmental news in the current
study, that is, governance, international relation and environmental science, as well as
intra-genre variations. USAS has 21 major discourse fields and 232 category labels.
Although such a comprehensive annotation system increases the depth and scope of
linguistic and sentiment analysis, it poses difficulties for detecting textual features
characteristic of each subtype of environmental news.
To achieve the first objective, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was applied to the
multidimensional annotated data. EFA is a widely used statistical technique that config-
ures the underlying patterns of a large set of observed variables by classifying the origi-
nal variables into a reduced set of variables known as principal components, factors,
conceptual dimensions or measurement scales. Through the statistical classification and
grouping of textual features such as different semantic discourse features such as nouns,
adjectives and verbs indicating people’s attitudes, opinions and subjective evaluation of
environmental events, EFA can extract consistent textual patterns in the three environ-
mental news categories, which are then called principal components or dimensions char-
acterizing and underscoring the reporting, presentation and/or style of each category.
This statistical method has been explored widely in stylistics and empirical translation
studies and, in short, it provides an efficient analytical tool to convert subjective evalua-
tion to objective empirical data analysis in language and textual studies.11
In the statistical extraction and identification of main textual dimensions that can be
used to define news genres, relevance of certain textual features (known as original observ-
able variables because they can be counted when reading news, for example, use of seman-
tic linguistic devices such as evaluative language expressing one’s feelings and judgment)
to a statistically extracted textual dimension is indicated by component loadings of textual
Ji 331

features on that particular dimension. Classified variables are either closely or loosely
related to the newly constructed dimensions as indicated by their varying component load-
ings. If a variable (textual feature) is strongly related to the principal dimension (i.e., par-
ticular aspect of the reporting style), then it will have a large loading score on that dimension
in the EFA result. That is, a large positive loading indicates a strong correlation between the
observed variable and the principal dimension, and a moderate positive loading implies the
limited contribution of the variable to the hosting factor. (Component loading scores may
also have negative values and the interpretation is slightly different. A large negative load-
ing suggests that an increase of value of the observed variable will cause a proportional
decrease in the value of the dependent variable. In other words, if a variable or textual
feature, for example, the use of words such as “good” or “bad” has a large negative loading
score on a principal dimension, it suggests that that particular textual feature is very
unlikely to appear in the news subgenre under study.)
In the current study, if some linguistic features were negatively related to a concep-
tual scale built by EFA, an increase of frequency of these linguistic features was linked
with the decrease in the frequency of subgenres that were highly related to that particu-
lar conceptual dimension. By eliminating observed variables with low loadings on the
conceptual dimensions and low item-total correlation scores within each dimension,
EFA can effectively extract textual features from a large number of original observed
variables to predict the dependent variable’s behavior. The small set of textual features
retained is then used to discriminate and classify underspecified environmental news,
which, again, is this study’s second objective.
Confirmatory statistics Discriminate Analysis (DA) was used to assess the validity
and efficiency of EFA-built conceptual scales or analytical models. DA is used to test
and verify whether the new principal dimensions (or aspects of reporting styles of
environmental news subgenre) extracted are reliable. This is done through testing new
analytical models with newly collected news data. If new models can be used to clas-
sify unknown environmental news sources and decide whether unknown news sources
fit into any of the three environmental news subgenres highlighted, it means that the
EFA analysis is robust and reliable; otherwise, further enhancement will be needed to
improve the current EFA analysis of the differences between environmental news sub-
genres. This set of research approaches and methodologies, that is, the development
and verification of corpus-data-driven news classification models, has been widely
explored in corpus linguistics and empirical translation studies amid the growing
research paradigm known as digital humanities.

Findings of the Corpus Analysis of Translational

Environmental News Data
Exploring Intra-Genre Differences
Exploratory statistical techniques such as EFA are particularly useful in the absence
of well-developed theoretical frameworks to inform empirical analyses like this study.
Based on the completed semantic analysis, an EFA was run on the collected news data.
Table 1 shows the variable and factor correlation scores between the observed vari-
ables and the conceptual scales constructed. A large positive score is a sign of the
variable as an acceptable measurement of the scale, indicating a strong correlation
332 Newspaper Research Journal 39(3)

Table 1
Variables/Factor Correlation
Observed Variable
No (USAS Categories) Factor 1 Factor 2

1 A1.2 0.745 –0.334

2 A1.6 0.281 –0.133
3 A1.7 0.321 –0.031
4 A4.2 –0.244 0.060
5 A5.2 0.383 –0.087
6 A5.4 0.251 0.070
7 A6 0.286 –0.151
8 A15 0.165 –0.059
9 E3 –0.079 –0.188
10 E4.2 0.346 –0.054
11 E4.1 –0.104 0.324
12 S1.2.6 0.140 0.692
13 S4.3.2 –0.208 –0.011
14 S3.1 –0.071 0.175
15 S6 –0.053 –0.039
16 S7.3 –0.200 0.128
17 S8 –0.227 0.081
18 Z4 –0.099 –0.248
19 Z7 0.109 0.467

Note. USAS = semantic analysis system.

between the variable and the conceptual scale constructed. A large negative score pro-
vides information regarding the distribution or variation in the dependent variable as a
result of variation in the observed variable. The efficiency of the model is enhanced by
removing variables with ambiguous or small loadings on both dimensions, that is,
A15, E3, S4.3.2, S3.1, S6, S7.3, S8 and Z4.
After the iterative selection process, a streamlined analytical model emerged. This
encompassed only four semantic analysis categories, that is, A1.2 (General/abstract
terms relating to appropriateness, suitability, aptness), A1.6 (General/abstract terms
denoting [level of] practicality/abstraction), A5.2 (Evaluation: true/false) and E4.2
(Level of contentment). Table 2 shows the internal structure of the two dimensional
model built by EFA. The first dimension is substantiated by A1.6 and E4.2, but the
second dimension includes A1.2 and A5.2. This highly streamlined bi-dimensional
EFA model means that the large number of translated environmental news articles col-
lected in this study can be effectively classified and distinguished by using this model.
In other words, based on the distribution of variables, that is, the eight semantic cate-
gories of words (A15, E3, S4.3.2, S3.1, S6, S7.3, S8 and Z4) in the news article, one
can separate different environmental news and suggest suitable news subgenre to label
news articles as belonging to governance, international relations or environmental
Ji 333

Table 2
Correlations between Variables and Factors after Varimax Rotation
USAS Variable USAS Variable Explanation Dimension 1 Dimension 2

E4.2 Level of contentment 0.991 –0.172

A1.6 General/abstract terms denoting (level of) 0.547 0.164
practicality/abstraction
A1.2 General/abstract terms relating to –0.149 0.969
appropriateness, suitability, aptness
A5.2 Evaluation: true/false 0.275 0.496

Note. USAS = semantic analysis system.

s­cience. This statistical approach can significantly reduce the subjectivity in many
existing studies of environment news and the news media.
Table 3 shows the result of DA in which the four sentiment analysis categories in
Table 2 were used to predict the group membership of 50 randomly selected articles
from the translated environmental news data set. Figures on the diagonal are cases that
have been rightly predicated by the DA model (20 for subgenre 1, 8 for subgenre 2 and
7 for subgenre 3) and their percentage of total, which includes both correctly and
incorrectly classified cases are presented in the last column (percent correct). As can
be seen in Table 3, the DA model rightly predicated almost 90 percent of the total cases
of subgenre 2 (international relations and environment); the success rate remains at a
high level of 80 percent with the discrimination of subgenre 1 (environment and gov-
ernance) and the lowest success rate was just above two fifths (44 percent) with the
identification of subgenre 3 (environmental science). As a result, the overall accuracy
of membership attribution of the DA model constructed is 71.1 percent.
The breakdown of the accuracy rates shows the DA model’s efficiency with the
classification of subgenre 1 and subgenre 2 and its limitation with the isolation of
subgenre 3 from the rest of the news texts. This suggests that BBC China tends to
deploy consistent translation strategies with the reporting of issues revolving two sets
of themes. These are (1) relation between (in)effective governance and environmental
deterioration, for example, air pollution in China and mismanagement of nuclear
plants in Japan, and (2) the problematization and prioritization of climate change and
other environmental issues on agendas of international gatherings and organizations as
well as part of national policies for and approaches to internationalization. The low
accuracy rate with the membership attribution of subgenre 3, that is, environmental
science indicates the DA model constructed does not help much with the study of
translated news on environmental science.

Exploring Intra-Genre Differences in Communication

Strategies and Language Styles
This section examines textual patterns underlie these three subtypes of translated
environmental news to identify reporting strategies developed by BBC China to frame
334 Newspaper Research Journal 39(3)

Table 3
Confusion Matrix of Discriminant Analysis
Membership Subgenre 1 2 3 Total % Correct

1 Governance (China, Japan, 20 4 1 25 80.00

the United States, Africa,
Australia)
2 International relations and 0 8 1 9 88.9
environment
3 Environmental science 5 4 7 16 44.5
Total 25 16 9 50 71.1

specific types of environmental change issues. Findings in 3.1 enable the alignment
and evaluation of strength of correlation between individual news articles within each
of three subtypes of translated environmental news with the highlighted sentiment
analysis categories in Table 2.
Similar to EFA, the size of factor loadings indicates the relation between the
observed variable and the conceptual scale constructed. A large positive score suggests
that news items tend to exhibit textual features (sentiment analysis categories in this
case) that have large positive loadings on that particular dimension. By contrast, a
large negative score implies that news articles lack certain textual features or tend to
exhibit reversed attributes of sentiment analysis categories which have large loadings
on a given dimension. The loadings of news items on both dimensions lead to the
discovery of the internal complexity or stratification of factor scores within each sub-
genre of translated environmental news.
News items belonging to each subgenre were resorted based on their computed fac-
tor scores on Dimension 1 (Table 4; only a fraction of the sorting result is provided
here, completed data sets are available upon request). This facilitated the isolation of
news items with negative loadings from those with positive loadings on Dimension 1.
The interpretation of the results leads to important findings regarding distinct framing
strategies used in three types of environmental news on BBC China. Four levels of the
controlled use of evaluative and judgmental language are found in the three subgenres
of environmental news reporting on BBC China:

1. Decrease (large negative loadings, above −1.0)

2. Neutralization (small negative or positive loadings, with the range of −0.4 and
0.4)
3. Moderation (medium positive loadings: controlled use of evaluative language,
between 0.4-1.0)
4. Increase (large positive loadings, above 1.0)

Subgenre 1 (Governance and Environment)

Neutralized or moderate use of abstract terms relating to appropriateness,
suitability
Ji 335

Table 4
Prior and Posterior Classification and Factor Scores (DA)
Observation Prior Posterior F1 F2

Obs12 1 2 –1.192 –0.046

Obs34 1 2 –1.192 –0.046
Obs48 1 2 –1.192 –0.046
Obs37 1 2 –1.452 –0.082
Obs2 2 2 –1.192 –0.046
Obs4 2 2 –1.192 –0.046
Obs15 2 2 –1.192 –0.046
Obs22 2 2 –1.192 –0.046
Obs25 2 2 –1.192 –0.046
Obs49 2 2 –1.192 –0.046
Obs11 2 2 –0.952 –0.082
Obs3 3 3 –0.452 0.182
Obs5 3 3 –0.452 0.182
Obs20 3 3 –0.452 0.182
Obs28 3 3 –0.452 0.182
Obs10 3 3 0.288 0.411
Obs14 3 3 0.288 0.411

Note. DA = discriminate analysis.

Neutralized or moderate use of evaluative language expressing false or true

Competing reporting style regarding the increased or decreased use of evaluative
language describing contentment and abstraction/practicality

Subgenre 2 (International Relations and Environment)

Decreased use of evaluative language describing contentment
Decreased use of evaluative language describing abstraction and practicality
Neutralized use of abstract terms relating to appropriateness, suitability
Neutralized use of evaluative language expressing false or true

Subgenre 3 (Environmental Science)

Neutralized or moderate use of abstract terms relating to appropriateness,
suitability
Neutralized or moderate use of evaluative language expressing false or true
Competing reporting style regarding the increased or decreased use of evaluative
language describing contentment and abstraction/practicality
336 Newspaper Research Journal 39(3)

Discussion of Corpus Findings

The corpus analysis revealed more homogeneity within the subgenre of interna-
tional relations and environment, while competing styles of reporting existed for the
subgenres of governance efficiency and environmental science. The focus of debates
and controversies in both cases was on the increased or decreased use of evaluative
language describing contentment such as aggrieved, chuffed, content, disappointed,
frustrated, humor, browned off, fed up, had enough of and expressions conveying
abstraction and practicality such as abstraction, hypothetical, metaphysics, notionally,
practicalities, theorize or in theory. The tendency of purposely increasing evaluative
language of contentment stands in contrast with other evaluative languages such as
abstract terms relating to appropriateness, suitability and evaluative language express-
ing false or true, which have been consistently neutralized or reduced across the three
subgenres of environmental reporting.
The increased use of evaluative language expressing contentment in translated
environmental news, despite the close relation between the source and the target texts,
could be due to various external factors including an effort made on the part of the
translator and editor to re-conceptualize environmental issues and events so that they
appear to have a more tangible impact on the readers’ daily lives. Subjectivity in
Chinese news tends to increase when journalists reflect upon a reported event. It seems
that Hsieh’s finding on induced subjectivity in the reworking of reported news in
Chinese journalism also holds in the current study.12 The result of the corpus analysis
shows that Chinese translators and editors, while working on the source English-
language texts, tended to modify the original texts for a culturally distinct audience.
Translating original news materials represents a further process in the framing, adapta-
tion and circulation of global environmental news to culturally diversified local
audiences.

EN1: Title: Air pollution in China killing 4,000 people every day: Nearly everyone
in China breathes worse air than the dirtiest air found in the US.
CH1: 报告：中国空气污染每天导致4000人死亡
(English translation: Report: Air pollution in China causes 4000 deaths every day)

This example above illustrates the content modification occurred in the translation
and adaptation of original English environmental news. In the original English title,
the subheading (“nearly everyone in China breathes worse air than the dirtiest air
found in the US”) that compares the air quality in China and in the United States was
deliberately omitted in the Chinese translation provided.

EN2: Air pollution is killing about 4,000 people in China a day, accounting for 1 in
6 premature deaths in the world’s most populous country, a new study finds.
(August 13, 2015, The Independent; www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/
air-pollution-in-china-killing-4000-people-every-day-10455409.html)
CH2: Chinese translation and adaptation: 一项研究报告显示，中国的空气污染
平均每天会导致4000人死亡，占中国总死亡人数的17%. (August 13, 2015,
BBC China; www.bbc.com/zhongwen/simp/china/2015/08/150813_china_poll
ution_report)
Ji 337

Translation: A research report shows that air pollution in China may cause 4000
deaths every day, representing 17% of the total deaths in China.

This is another typical example that illustrates the content variation and modifica-
tion occurred in the translation process. First, while the original English news uses the
present tense “is killing,” the Chinese translation has deliberately introduced the modal
verb “may cause,” which significantly weakened the causal relationship between air
pollution and the severe consequences and threats to public health. Second, in the
original English news, the proportion of deaths caused by air pollution was one out six
premature deaths in China every year, highlighting the impact of environment on
healthy Chinese populations. However, this fact was altered to “17% of the total deaths
in China every year” in the Chinese translation, which would mislead the audience in
the reading and understanding the original English research report, because “total
deaths” include both healthy populations and people living with disabling conditions
caused by other external and/or internal factors.
Another important finding emerged from the corpus analysis is the inconsistent
reporting style of governance and environmental science regarding the presence of
evaluative language expressing abstraction and practicality. An increased level of
abstraction in the reporting of environmental issues, particularly unobtrusive issues
such as climate change, requires specialized knowledge and a higher level of literacy
from the audience.
The coexistence of abstract and more concrete reporting styles seems to suggest
that BBC China attempts to attract and appeal to readers with different educational
backgrounds and political stances. A “balanced” account between abstraction and nar-
ration of issues that are seen as sensitive and controversial in China, such as the effi-
ciency or lack of efficiency of governing bodies and authorities in dealing with
environmental changes, will necessarily add to the credibility, impartiality and depth
of critical analysis to the news outlet.
Important consistent textual patterns also emerged from the cross-genre analysis of
translated environmental news. First, in all three subgenres of translated environmen-
tal news, the use of abstract terms relating to appropriateness, suitability and evalua-
tive language expressing false or true is neutralized (within the range of −0.4 and 0.4
in terms of factor scores) or maintained at a positive yet controlled level (within the
range of 0.4 and 1.0).
Second, a distinctive feature of the subgenre of international relations and environ-
ment is the decreased use of evaluative language describing contentment, abstraction
and practicality. The avoidance of judgmental language that evaluates the suitability
and authenticity of elements of relevant news events, again, reflects the tradition of
neutrality and objectivity of English-language journalism.
The mixed corpus findings suggest a tendency to modify and adapt original news
materials in source languages for culturally distinct audiences. BBC China exempli-
fies localized digital news media and news outlets that have been born out of the latest
waves of globalization. The subgenres identified and their associated reporting strate-
gies reveal the dynamics of environmental news when the original news has been
translated, adapted for specific cultural and language communities. The finding shows
that as a developing specialized translation genre of important cross-cultural impact,
the production of translated environmental news involves a variety of factors, particu-
larly the cultural and linguistic sensitivity of the intended target audiences.
338 Newspaper Research Journal 39(3)

Editors’ Note
This article was accepted for publication under the editorship of Sandra H. Utt and Elinor Kelley Grusin.

Notes
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