Translating National Ideology in China English －A Diachronic Investigation of Beijing Review

As an expanding circle variety, the distinctive features of China English have been identified as: idiom transfers, loan translations of political terms, connotation changes, semantic shifts, and the orientalized style of discourse. While its characteristics are agreed upon by most researchers, China English does not always display these characteristics to the same extent. A Comparison of articles in Beijing Review (the first English weekly news magazine in the PRC for international consumption) over the years of 1958-2015 shows both endonormative (towards the “Chinese” characteristics) and exonormative (towards “international English”) movements. In general, earlier issues, especially those during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) are more “marked” than recent ones. It is argued that the shaping and re-shaping of China English is a reflection of the changing political, ideological and economic priorities of the nation.