Translation Studies on Xi Jinping: The Governance of China— A Systematic Literature Review

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Introduction
As one of the important political documents of the Communist Party of China, Xi Jinping: The Governance of China is "related to China's capacity to enhance its outward representation" (Zappone, 2018, p. 253), which "is a great source of the knowledge about contemporary China" (Wiktor, 2019, p. 191).It has a significant role in conceptualizing the governance of China (Ali, 2022) and has achieved outstanding outputs in a short period of time (Zappone, 2018).The first to fourth volumes of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China have now gone abroad and published and distributed a total of 37 languages in the international community, including English, French, Russian, Arabic, and other languages.They have been indexed by libraries in more than 130 countries and regions, covering more than 170 countries and regions, making them the most translated and published languages and the largest circulation with the widest coverage in China's leaders' works publication since the reform and opening up (Hu, 2023).Ali (2022, p. 132) pointed it out that "this book is more inspiring than any vision emerging in the 21st century", which can effectively transmit 'China's voice' as well as enhance the soft power resources of China (Zappone, 2018).
In order to familiarize the current status of academic research on the English translation of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China, this paper will conduct a systematic literature review of the previous studies within China and other countries, which is different from that of the previous reviews limited in CNKI.Based on the data from CNKI, Google Scholar and Research Gate, together with the Web of Science within the period from October 2014 to July 2023, the following literature review will be divided into Chinese scholars' and international scholars' researches, hoping to encourage more international scholars to participate in the study of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China.

Review of Research on Translation Strategies of Political Documents
The translation strategies research is the most investigated among the English translation study of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China.
As a famous translator in China and one of the finalists of the English versions of the first and second volumes of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China, Huang (2018) proposed three consciousnesses in such political translations: language consciousness, political consciousness and audience consciousness.Language consciousness refers to the translator's Chinese and English language understanding ability and bilingual conversion ability; political consciousness, that is, the translator's political literacy, is the professional ability to ensure the translator's understanding of the original text and expression of the translated text; audience consciousness refers to the translator's cognition of readers' reception.Specific to related translation strategy research, some studies specifically discussed translation methods on a certain point in its English translation (Li, 2019;Zhao, 2020).Dou and Wen (2015) combined 23 speeches from the English translation of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China to analyze the characteristics of President Xi Jinping's people-first discourse and its translation strategies.The use of literal translation, transmigration and back translation can faithfully reproduce this discourse feature.Transmigration can reproduce President Xi Jinping's emotions about the story being told; literal translation can effectively convey the cultural connotations in Chinese metaphors and Chinese classics; while back translation can shorten the psychological distance between the speaker and the target language audience.Tang (2015) analyzed the books' English translation rules and techniques of the structure 'kēxué (de) + N' based on lexical collocation, and tried to condense how to use it in politics translation to express language patterns with Chinese characteristics.Zhao (2017), based on the analysis of English translation strategies such as foreignization, explicitation, simplification, and information recombination applied in the books, found that the translation strategies are influenced by the translation objectives, different text types, and cultural consciousness.Niu (2018) held that the English translation strategy of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China can be analyzed from two dimensions.The first dimension is based on the source language level.To be faithful to the source language, the foreignization strategy can be adopted with 'literal translation' or 'literal translation + annotation' to preserve the text style and cultural characteristics of the source language; the second dimension is the strategy of domestication with the audience as the destination.The author proposed that if the content of the source language does not involve ideology and there are large differences in forms between the two languages and cultures, the domestication translation strategy can be adopted.Jin (2019) used descriptive translation studies to summarize and verify the types of creative thinking utilized in the English translation of Xi's works under Conceptual Integration Theory, including diversified thinking, reorganization thinking, reverse thinking, lateral thinking, connective thinking, circuitous thinking.This study has contributed valuable experience to the study of the psychological process of translation.Deng and Zeng (2020) suggested that translation methods such as omitted translation, substitution and repetition can achieve rhetorical convergence and pragmatic equivalence between the target language text and the original text, thereby improving the effect of political information transmission.Jia (2021) held that the good translation effect of the English version of Xi's works is that the translator can actively follow the internationally accepted political discourse norms and translate in a language that is close to the 'natural style' of the target language.Liu (2021) proposed eight principles for political document translation through her own experience in participating in the translation of this book, which are to enhance political sensitivity, convey the ideological connotation of the original text, differentiate synonyms, enhance readers' reading experience, get close to the expression habits of the target language, clarify the original information, avoid ideological factors that hinder readers' understanding, and bridge cultural differences.Zhang and Pang (2022) studied the issue of loyalty in the English translation of Xi's works from the perspective of institutional translation.The authors emphasized the necessity and importance of loyalty in translation, and explored the relativity of the principle of loyalty, the multidimensional nature of faithful content, and the constancy of faithful objects.This paper also demonstrated the loyalty of the domestication strategy used in the English translation of Xi's works.Xu (2023) conducted a study on English translation strategies for digital abbreviations in Xi's works (Volumes 1-4), and then proposed such strategies for digital abbreviations as deletion, equivalent reproduction, de-digitization, structural type changes, numerical changes, both structural and numerical changes, and changes in non-numerical morphemes.Li (2023) combined the English version of the first volume of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China and proposed a path for the translation of proper names in political documents.The proper names can be analyzed first through the cognitive path of 'grammar-semantics-pragmatics'.Then, based on the path of 'pragmatics-semantics-grammar', four translation methods including transliteration, free translation, phonetic-meaning combination and extended interpretation can be adopted to synthesize and translate the semantic representation of proper names into the target language.Gao (2022) studied the subtext (endnote) translation issues of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China, and proposed translation strategies such as additions, adjustments, and deletions to make adequacy and acceptability of translation.
There are also some articles that study translation strategies through comparative text research, that is, diachronic and synchronic studies of different political texts.Although the comparative texts chosen by the researchers vary, they all regard the English translation of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China as one of the core corpus.
On the basis of the aforementioned research of Zhao (2017), Zhao (2018a) also conducted text comparative research in his doctoral dissertation.It further explored the standard issues of English translation of the works of the above-mentioned three leaders.Through investigation, the author pointed out that the initial norms of English translation of each political document are 'China-oriented', 'Dialogue-oriented' and 'Understanding-oriented' respectively.The operational norms are also different, namely 'Foreignization-dominated', 'Diversification-inclined' and 'Multiple-complementary' respectively, but these operational specifications all adhere to the basic principle of 'China-oriented'.After discussing the five basic translation characteristics of English translations, the author proposed three modes of English translation of political documents under the current social and cultural background: cultural transplant, cultural combination and cultural reconstruction with corresponding English translation strategies and methods.At the same time, Zhao (2018b) further compared title English translation strategy in Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung (Volume 4), Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping (Volume 3) and Xi Jinping: The Governance of China (Volume 1), and found that Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung tends to literal translation, although the literal translation in Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping still accounts for the majority, the translation strategies have become diversified; while the proportion of literal translation is much lower than that of omission in Xi Jinping: The Governance of China.This study further explored the reasons for changes in English translation strategies from four aspects: translation poetics, social and historical context, translator's style, and the readers.
There are also studies by Jiang and Ren (2019) and Zhang (2019) that explore the similarities and differences in translation strategies through comparison of translated versions of political documents.Jiang and Ren (2019) compared the English translation strategies of Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung and Xi Jinping: The Governance of China and found that the former was faithful to the translation orientation of the original text, while the latter was the source language orientation, and identified on this basis the influencing factors of changes in translation strategies.Zhang (2019) comparatively analyzed the English translations of the 19th National Congress Report, Xi Jinping: The Governance of China and Understanding China in the New Era, and proposed translation strategies for the translation of new concepts and new expressions: Translators need to interpret the political connotations contained in relevant new concepts with high accuracy.For the implicit logic in new concepts or new expressions, translators need express them explicitly; translators should have the courage to reconstruct and innovate related expressions that have already been established; and we must achieve differentiated translations for different audiences.In the process of constantly updating translation research with corpus translation technology, scholars are constantly applying corpus technology to study the translation strategies of political documents in combination with the Chinese-English translation of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China (Chen & Jian, 2019;Hu & Tian, 2018;Liang, 2018;Zhu, 2020).Hu and Zhao (2023) jumped out of the old way of discussing translation strategies with specific texts, based on the self-constructed corpus of Xi Jinping's speeches in volumes 1-2 for the subject of investigation corpus, and former US President Trump's speeches as comparable corpus for source language text reference.It analyzed the explicitness and implicitness in the English translation of political texts, and verified the existence of common phenomena of explicitness and implicitness.However, the influencing factors and causes of their formation are not investigated in this paper.
Just as Yang (2021, p. 48) pointed out, "inspecting the English translation strategies of current political discourse from a historical perspective helps to show the process of evolution of English translation strategies and clarify the cultural and social reasons for this process.It is a specific application of social-translation studies."At the same time, we should also realize that whether it is domestication and foreignization proposed by Lawrence Venuti, or literal translation and free translation proposed by Eugene Nida, the relationship between them is not mutually exclusive, but should be inclusive with each other, and in the English translation activities of political documents, they should be organically combined.Only in this way can the healthy development of the translation industry be better promoted.
Translation norms serve as the 'intermediary' through which social ideologies and values act on translation practice (Chen, 2019).When discourse analysis and translation studies are organically combined, translation research can move toward sociology, which can provide a more precise theoretical foundation for translation norms (Yang, 2021).Some researchers have tried to apply discourse analysis theory, especially Critical Discourse Analysis theory, to the study of the English translation of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China.Based on the view of 'discourse is a social practice', Yin (2017) combined ideological research with meaning exploration and discourse construction theory to explore the issue of the translator's subjective initiative in the English translation of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China, and it concluded that the translators have given positive feedbacks in the process of ideological construction, meaning construction and related discourse construction.Liu (2019) applied Halliday's interpersonal function theory of Systemic Functional Linguistics, to analyze the mood structure and content structure of a speech in the English translation of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China and found that the translator was more proactive in the construction of discourse at the tone level.Chen and Chen (2019) focused on the evaluation of the discourse quality of the translation of the English version of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China from the perspective of intertextuality.Zhu and Yang (2021) took the 'adverb + verb' structure in Xi Jinping: The Governance of China as the research object, conducted a comparative analysis of Chinese and Western discourse characteristics based on the corpus, and analyzed under the guidance of Laclau and Mouffe's discourse theory, which explained why the translation of discourse with Chinese characteristics has weakened.The paper pointed out that when translating political discourse with Chinese characteristics, the discourse characteristics of its own should be retained, and it also needs to adopt a method of 'merging Chinese culture and western culture' to enhance the awareness of the discourse audience and make the translation more acceptable to readers.Liu and Li (2022) based on the experiential mode of meaning and register theory of Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics, studied how the experiential meanings of ancient Chinese poetry and prose involved in Xi Jinping: The Governance of China are translated, and at the same time the factors affecting transitivity patterns and shift tendencies were explored.Research results showed that translators are more inclined to reproduce the experiential meaning of Chinese classical poetry in translation, because these reflect the objective connections between real things, and this can also better understand our experience of this objective world.The research results also found that translators tend to simplify the experiential meaning in translation by compressing or omitting unnecessary transitivity processes and nominating participants and environments.Besides, the target text is also inclined to simplify the experiential meaning by compressing and omitting unnecessary transitivity processes and the participant and circumstance nominalization.
Others who used discourse analysis theory for text analysis include Chen et al. (2023) with the help of UAM Corpus Tool to construct a Chinese-English bilingual parallel corpus of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China (Volume 1), based on the theoretical framework of the evaluation system, using a research method that combines quantitative and qualitative analysis to explore the impact of the reconstruction of the meaning of evaluation in the translation of political documents on the international image of the Communist Party of China.The study found that: although the number and type of evaluation resources used in the translation are not completely consistent with those in the original text, especially the graduation resources are quite different, in the overall evaluation meaning construction process, the attitudinal meaning and interventional meaning of the translation and the original text are basically consistent, that is, the translator has made efforts to maintain the evaluation meaning of the original text and take into account the language characteristics of the target language at the same time, thus appropriately adding, subtracting, and adjusting the evaluation resources in the original text.

Overview of Cultural Translation Research in Political Document Translation
Language, as a major carrier of culture, its existing structures will affect the meaning of discourse under the influence of the corresponding culture.Since the mid-20th century, there have been several research turns in the field of humanities and social sciences, one of which is known as the 'cultural turn' of translation studies (Bassnett & Lefevere, 1990).It was first proposed and demonstrated by translators Susan Bassnett and Andre Lefevere in their co-authored book Translation, History and Culture in 1990.The 'cultural turn' of translation emphasizes that translation itself is not a purely linguistic activity, but a cross-cultural communication activity.Some studies by Chinese scholars are based on the concept of cultural translation to discuss the cultural translation issues of the English version of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China.Lin and Lin (2016) found that translation methods such as literal translation, paraphrase, and contextualized free translation are conducive to the accurate translation of Chinese culture-loaded words and related Chinese-English sentence pattern processing issues, but during translation, we must learn to flexibly have relevant translation methods according to the context.Wang and Xu (2019) chose the English version of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China as research corpus and conducted translation issues with idiom expressions with Chinese characteristics and ancient Chinese classics.The conclusions reached are consistent with those of Lin and Lin (2016), emphasizing that both literal translation and free translation should be flexibly based on the translation effect, so I will not go into details here.There are also studies based on relevant translation theories to study the translation strategies of culturally loaded words in Xi Jinping: The Governance of China (Bu & Zhu, 2019;Liu, 2019), the research logic is similar with what we have discussed in the above section.
Research by Zhao and Zhao (2019) showed that in order to better improve the position of Chinese cultural elements in the target language, translators are required to have extremely high language and cultural consciousness, and to effectively apply reducible literal translation to retain the Chinese cultural elements in the source language, and the translator can also reconstruct the 'other' context to make the translation have rich linguistic and cultural hybrid characteristics.Zhu (2020) studied the translation methods of Chinese allusions in the English translation of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China and its implications for foreign publicity translation.This study believed that the reason why the English translation of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China can achieve good readers' reception is that the translators can adhere to the translation stance of 'international expression of Chinese views', the concept of cultural exchange 'transform differences and integrate', and the cultural transformation strategy of 'change with the situation and adapt with the times'.Guo and He (2021) analyzed the intralingual intertextuality phenomenon of cultural values in Xi Jinping: The Governance of China and the strategies to achieve the interlingual intertextual effect in the translated version, pointing out that transplantation and appropriation strategies help the translated version to spread Chinese cultural values.Si and Zeng (2021) believed that the translation strategy of easing doubts and confusions, the rhetorical strategy of converging to the target language, and the translation innovation strategy of political discourse with Chinese characteristics can help demonstrate China's cultural confidence.Feng and Zhu (2022) combined their research on the translation of allusions in the first three volumes of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China and found that the translation of allusions requires translators to accurately convey historical experience and philosophy, as well as necessary adjustments to literary forms such as language rhetoric, rhythm and rhyme based on different contexts and discourse priorities.

A Review of Research on National Image Construction and Overseas Communication in Political Document Translation
Edward W. Said (1999), one of the most influential literary and artistic critics in the world, pointed out in his book Orientalism that due to the cultural trends formed in history, Western culture is stronger than Eastern culture.As Zhu (2018) mentioned, in the public opinion field controlled by Western discourse, the image of China is usually described and shaped by Westerners with a negative image.The result of Western scholars describing the East from outside the East is that this externality causes Westerners to often describe the East in a fictional way (Said, 1999).This 'other' image is often not real and objective enough.With the continuous rise of Eastern culture and soft power, China's culture should take the 'going global strategy' to let the world better understand the image of the East and listen to the voice of the East.This also coincides with President Xi Jinping's initiative of 'telling China's stories and conveying China's voice'.The publication and dissemination of the English translation of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China is also a useful attempt for Chinese culture to take the initiative to the world.It is of far-reaching significance for building China's image and conveying China's voice on the world stage (Zhu, 2018).Chen (2018) studied the relevant reports of Xi Jinping's governance thoughts in the British The Daily Telegraph and found that although the reporting form was concrete and visual, there was still reporting bias and distortion of facts; and then analyzed the existence of this kind of reporting the causes of the phenomenon and corresponding countermeasures.It can be seen from this that the overseas construction of a national image is a long-term and systematic project, which requires continuous breakthroughs in the fixed thinking of 'other shaping'.
The publication and distribution of the English translation of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China is to construct China's image externally from the dimension of 'self-shaping'.From the perspective of paratext, some scholars have analyzed the image of Xi Jinping as the Chinese President created in the English translation as an approachable, concerned about people's livelihood, strict governance of the Party, diligent in governing the country, and knowledgeable leader (Chen 2019;Chen & Liu, 2017); while Hu and Li (2023) took a different approach by using a multilingual database to analyze the high-frequency nouns and high-frequency verbs in the scientific and technological discourse in the English translation of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China to explore the construction of China's scientific and technological image in the text , which also provides multiple perspectives for research on image construction.Other related studies have analyzed the principles, paths and effects of the overseas dissemination of the English translation of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China (Chen & Zhao, 2016;Dou, 2016;Guan, 2015;2017;Guan, 2023;Liu, 2018;Lu et al., 2020;Wang, 2020;Wen & Dou, 2017;Xia, 2017;Zhang & Zhang, 2018;Zhou, 2019); and relevant researches have explored the image construction and external communication effects of Xi's translated versions, which is forming a comprehensive research model of the national text external communication system that integrates linguistics, translation studies, publishing studies, and communication studies (Zhou, 2022).

A Review of Research by International Scholars on the Translation of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China
Xi Jinping: The Governance of China, as one of the main political documents in China, "is interesting to read for those trying to understand China's system of governance and its economic role in the world" (Ali, 2022, p. 132).This section will give a brief review of foreign researchers' previous and current studies on these series of books to further understand its research status.Malik (2014) made a book review of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China.In his review, the author first gave a simple background of China's fast development to be the second largest economy in the world and the simple introduction to this book.As the president of China, Xi Jinping ensured his mind to create a good life for all the 56 peoples in China under the guidance of socialism with Chinese characteristics, only with which can bring China's further development.The author also commented Xi Jinping's tough decision of zero-tolerance against the officials' corruption in China, whether they are 'tigers' or 'flies'.After that, Malik made a short comment on the Appendix of this book, which is the about Xi Jinping's life and his achievements, together with the policies he raised.The author commented that this book is quite helpful to understand the modern China and its domestic and foreign policies, politicians and researchers alike can learn much from this book about China's fast development.Swaine (2015) interpreted the foreign policies involved in the English version of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China.He analyzed and commented the evaluation given by Chinese government officials and scholars based on the relevant information through authoritative sources, quasi authoritative sources and non-authoritative sources.On this basis, the author proposed that as China's power continues to increase, the Chinese government needs to examine the potential contradictions existing in its foreign policy more directly and comprehensively, so as to ensure that other countries believe that it is committed to maintaining a peaceful and stable international order.Peters (2017Peters ( , p. 1301) ) pointed it out the purposes of publishing Xi Jinping: The Governance of China are not the same between the Chinese government and the non-hagiographical commentary.The former replied it that there is a need to response to "rising international interest" and "to enhance the rest of the world's understanding of the Chinese government's philosophy and its domestic and foreign policies."While the latter thought this book is to moderate the western world's fear about China's growth into the world's second superpower with its peaceful development for global stability and international order (Swaine, 2015).
The author Franҫois Bougon pointed that the cover of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China is the same in all the countries' publication, which "features an image of the president redolent of 1960s portraits of Mao at the height of his personality cult" (Bougon, 2018, p. 6).
Associate professor Tanina Zappone (2018) from Università degli Studi di Torino made a study on Xi Jinping: The Governance of China from the point of view of discursive power strategy from two angles: the first one is to discuss what translation strategies have been applied when doing the translation practice with the author herself as one of the Italian translators in this book; the second angle is to investigate the translation effectiveness in the process of external publicity.To be more specific, with the purpose of better conveying China's voice to the world, the translators in this book preferred the target-oriented translation strategies with culture-orientation based mainly on dynamic equivalence principle.This outcome based on the 'pyramidally based' process for political purposes is still has a poor result in foreign readers' reception because of the contradiction of the leadership with the refusion of using the past political language but not questioning its existing political system.After this research, Zappone (2021) investigated the 'institutional translation' of China's political translation practice, which she considered it as a multi-stage and multi-level process based on 'collective dimension'.Based on this translation system, the political translating activities are seen as a collaborative translating process deeply influenced by the dynamics of interaction.Based on the Chinese to Italian translated version of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China, the author made a case study of investigating different stages of dynamics of interaction happened among different identities under this 'collective dimension' during the translating procedure.This research shed light on the political translation practice within the institutional translation, which is an understudied translation area and needs further investigation.Wiktor and Wei (2019) are from University of Wrocław, they made a study of the theoretical issues of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China (I).Firstly, the authors discussed the original Chinese path to socialism by the construction of 'socialist market economy'.Then, the authors discussed the problems of building the socialism in China based on the Confucius philosophy and the theory of Marxism.Lastly, the authors had a case study of China's future status of economy from the perspective of state-owned enterprise.Ali (2022) made a review of this book of volume III, and analyzed Xi Jinping's philology of governance, at the same time, Ali commented that this book has changed our understanding of the term 'state', together with the conceptions of 'state-system' and 'governance'.In the end, Ali put that this book has a significant role in conceptualizing the governance of China, and its development and solidarity with the outside world, together with its ways of domestic reform and corruption-combating.

Discussion and Conclusion
By reading and classifying relevant previous studies, the research on the English translation of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China by scholars in Chinese Mainland mainly focuses on three fields: research on translation strategies of political documents, cultural translation in foreign publicity translation, the external dissemination of political documents and the construction of national image.A small number of studies belong to an emerging field, in which related researches apply discourse analysis-related theories combined with the English translation of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China to explore discourse theory paradigms, evaluate discourse quality, and conduct corpus analysis of discourse.Although there are currently many translation studies on Xi Jinping: The Governance of China, there are too many repetitive studies, and many theories in theoretical research have not been innovative and developed.Moreover, compared with translation theory research, the number of translation publication and communication studies is relatively small, and the quantitative research methods are single and the data statistics are too simple.All of these are not conducive to the formation of sustainable benign communication (Li & Niu, 2021).
International scholars' researches based on Xi Jinping: The Governance of China mainly focus on book reviews or analyzing a certain aspect of General Secretary Xi Jinping's governance philosophy, while there is minimal research on the translation strategies and methods of its translation, thus the current academic research conducted by foreign scholars on Xi Jinping: The Governance of China is still very scarce and insufficient.Whether on the study of its review of the content or its translation practice, dissemination and reception in foreign reader markets, there are no relevant comprehensive research results, thus resulting in the difficulties in 'spreading the voice of China and showcasing the image of China', which poses a practical challenge to both the Chinese government's external communication needs and the dissemination intentions of relevant publishing and distribution units.Therefore, Chinese scholars should further participate in domestic and international academic exchanges, broaden their academic horizons, and publish more innovative research results in important domestic and international journals.On the one hand, this can further explore the academic value of these series of political document, and at the same time, it can better connect with international audiences, thereby encouraging more international scholars to participate in the translation and research of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China and other significant political documents, which can better assist in the global expression of 'Chinese experience' and 'Chinese wisdom'.