Foreign translators help tell nation's story to world

Yahia Mustafa, 65, from Sudan, was responsible for the Arabic translation of Xi's report to the 19th CPC National Congress in 2017. It was the first time that foreigners had been invited to take part in this work since the late 1970s.

"Allowing us to be directly involved in the translation shows the CPC's confidence, openness and transparency," Mustafa said.

He noticed that key concepts in the report, from "building a moderately prosperous society in all respects" to "building a community with a shared future for mankind" are aimed at putting the public interest above all else.

The distinctive feature of the Party is that it always puts people first and cares for and serves them, Mustafa said.

He also contributed to the Arabic version of Xi's On Building a Human Community with a Shared Future, a book that contains numerous Chinese idioms, proverbs, ancient poems and quotations.

Mustafa, who has lived in China for more than 20 years, said many Chinese expressions are closely related to the country's 5,000-year history and culture, so the implications behind these terms cannot become clear if they are directly translated word by word.

"We need to gain a thorough understanding of them before delivering the meaning in a different language, so when translating the book, I tried to use a lot of annotations to better explain expressions that cannot be easily understood," he said.

Sean Slattery, who comes from Ireland and was involved in translating Xi's speech at a ceremony marking the CPC's centenary on July 1, cited an example of why it is necessary to consider the features of both Chinese and the target language in translation work.

In the speech, Xi said, "Anyone who would attempt to do so (allow bullying, oppression or subjugation by any foreign force) will find themselves on a collision course with a great wall of steel forged by over 1.4 billion Chinese people."

Slattery said, "However, some foreign media outlets simply translated the Chinese word by word, so that 'find themselves on a collision course' turned out to be 'get their heads bashed bloody'. In this way, the translation didn't accurately deliver the meaning in Chinese."

He added that the translation of Party and central government documents is becoming increasingly important, as is the role played by China on the world stage, because foreigners increasingly need to know about the nation's policies and its governance experience, such as the fight against poverty.

China has lifted about 770 million people out of poverty since the reform and opening-up policy was launched in the late 1970s. The poverty alleviation campaign, reinforced after the 18th CPC National Congress in 2012, lifted 98.99 million impoverished people in rural areas out of extreme poverty.