以社會學的角度淺析中國霸權背景下之聯合國人權事務高級專員辦事處中文翻譯的政治化現象

Abstract

中國於近三十年迅速崛起成爲世界霸主之一，更是聯合國的第二大金主。在此背景下，本研究旨在探討聯合國人權事務高級專員辦事處(Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights，簡稱 OHCHR) 所出版的中文新聞稿裡，中國侵犯人權事件之呈現。爲瞭解OHCHR新聞稿的翻譯過程，本文主要以Bourdieu的場域 (field）和資本 (capital）等社會實踐理論 (Social Practice Theory）與Latour爲探索「社會行動者」(social agent/actor）之間的關係與交流而提出的「行動者網絡理論」(Actor-network Theory）作爲理論架構，以社會學的角度檢視OHCHR的中文翻譯網絡裡有哪些角色，以及各角色之間的互動如何影響其中文翻譯的產出，甚至造成中英新聞稿的差異。同時，研究者也針對35組出版於2017至2022年的OHCHR中英新聞稿進行比較，並於文本分析階段注入政治論述分析（political discourse analysis）的元素，參考了Chilton & Schäffner 於1997年針對政治化論述（politicized discourse）的潛在目的所提出的四種策略功能（strategic functions）:1)強迫；2)抵制、反對與抗議；3)掩飾；4)合法化與去合法化，以進一步瞭解OHCHR中英新聞稿的差異背後隱藏著何種政治意涵，以及中文新聞稿當中的政治訊息如何透過翻譯得以產生、變更與傳遞。文本分析結果顯示，大部分中英文本在選字、修辭和內容上皆有落差，且用意似乎在於美化中國侵犯人權事件之呈現，進而影響外界對於該議題的看法，並削減中國應負的國際責任。

Against the backdrop of the People’s Republic of China’s recent rise to international prominence and its position as a financial backbone of the United Nations, this research seeks to explore the representation of China’s human rights transgressions in 35 Mandarin press publications released between 2017 and 2022 by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). Drawing on Bourdieu (1977)’s Social Practice Theory, which offers an agent-oriented approach in its understanding of social practice by examining the habitus, field and capital of social agents, as well as Latour (1990)’s Actor-network Theory, which situates social agency in an actor-network to scrutinize the interplay among social agents, this study hopes to identify the parties involved in the production of the OHCHR’s Mandarin translations, and how these agents may interact to give rise to discrepancies between the OHCHR’s English and Mandarin press publications. To better understand the potential political implications of the OHCHR’s Mandarin press publications, they were compared against their English counterparts and analyzed on the linguistic basis of (i) lexical choice; (ii) stylistic and rhetorical strategy employed; and (iii) content consistency. The proposed procedure for textual analysis borrows from the field of political discourse analysis, and further refers to Chilton and Schäffner (1997)’s four strategic functions—(i) coercion; (ii) resistance, opposition and protest; (iii) dissimulation; and (iv) legitimization and delegitimization, so as to better perceive how political messages are created, modified, and conveyed via translation from the English source text to the Mandarin target text. The present findings suggest that the OHCHR’s Mandarin publications seem to delegitimize allegations of China’s human rights violations by featuring word choices, rhetorical strategies and content that appear to downplay China’s responsibility as a human rights offender, so as influence public perception of China’s purported human rights transgressions, and direct the country’s human rights narrative, hence contributing to the potential politicization of the OHCHR’s Mandarin translations.