War of the words: Why top US diplomat Rubio is lost in China's translations

The Star

2 days ago

America's top diplomat Marco Rubio has made clear that he does not trust Beijing's English translations of Chinese officials' words – he says they are 'never right'.
The China hawk has instead urged his colleagues to go back to the original Chinese version of statements put out by Beijing to get a more accurate understanding of what is going on.
Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, appears to be the most powerful diplomat under President Donald Trump. He is the first person since Henry Kissinger to hold the national security adviser and secretary of state positions at the same time, making him the point man on China over the next four years.
Rubio has been blunt about his distrust of China. During his secretary of state confirmation hearing in January, he highlighted the importance of referring to the original Chinese to understand the words of President Xi Jinping.
'Don't read the English translation that they put out because the English translation is never right,' he said.
The subject of translation came up again later that month, when Rubio and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi spoke by phone. Wang reportedly told Rubio to ' hao zi wei zhi ' – an idiom Beijing translated as 'act accordingly' in its English readout of the call. It was more stern in foreign media reports on the meeting – Reuters translated it as 'conduct yourself well', while Bloomberg's translation was 'conduct yourself properly'.
Adding to the confusion, Rubio denied Wang had even given him any warning. 'The translator that was on the call did not say anything to me that I felt was over the top. But then they put out these games – they like to play these games,' Rubio said in an interview on The Megyn Kelly Show, according to a transcript released by the US Department of State.
'They put out these translations where it says one thing in English and then it's translated in a different – they use a different term in Mandarin – so like 'He was warned not to overstep himself'. They never said that.'
Accurate translation is a difficult task given the linguistic, cultural and political differences between the United States and China. Analysts also point to other factors, such as the target audience for the messaging.
But one thing is clear – understanding what the other side is saying is more important than ever amid a 90-day pause in the US-China tariff war and with key areas on the table for negotiation, from electric vehicles to semiconductors and rare minerals.
Xiaoyu Pu, an associate professor of political science at the University of Nevada, said the linguistic, conceptual and political differences between the countries could lead to gaps in perception and interpretation.
He said some Chinese political phrases were 'highly idiomatic, historically rooted or symbolic', and that made them challenging to translate directly.
Pu noted that there was also a difference in political communication styles. He said Chinese official discourse could be vague and ambiguous, whereas Western diplomatic language tended to be more direct and precise.
He said there was also some flexibility with translation that could be used strategically for different audiences.
'As one Chinese concept can be translated into different English terms, sometimes Chinese officials intentionally emphasise the Chinese meaning for a domestic audience while translating the idea into English for an international audience,' Pu said.
He pointed to the idiom used by Wang as an example, saying it was intended for a nationalistic domestic audience, while the official English translation was more moderate.
According to Pu, Chinese concepts could sometimes also be interpreted by foreign translators in the West in ways that fit their country's political climate, rather than genuinely adhering to the original Chinese meaning.
Pang Zhongying, a visiting senior fellow at Singapore's ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, said Rubio seemed to have 'inherited' a distrust of Beijing's translations from other China hawks like Robert Lighthizer.
Lighthizer, the US trade representative and architect of the trade war with China in Trump's first term, wrote in his 2023 book No Trade Is Free that: 'There is often a major difference between what China says in Chinese to its people and the way it officially translates those words into English for Western audiences.
'Routinely, the harsh, combative language is watered down. It thus is important to look to an unofficial and candid translation to determine what is being conveyed,' he said, citing an interpretation of Xi's report to the 2022 Communist Party congress provided by Kevin Rudd, the former Australian prime minister and a China expert who speaks fluent Mandarin.
Pang said political distrust was at the heart of 'misconception or disinformation' given that both sides had a large team of professional translators to draw on.
He said one way to reduce the problem was by increasing face-to-face communications so that misunderstandings could be cleared up. That was especially important given the range of issues expected to be negotiated by Beijing and Washington following the trade war truce agreed in Geneva earlier this month, he added.
Sabine Mokry, a researcher at the University of Hamburg's Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy, said the criticism of Beijing's English translations reflected a deep-seated mistrust that had become one of the defining features of US-China relations.
She said the remarks were 'a bit overblown'. 'It speaks to a common perception – or misperception – that we don't know anything about their [Chinese authorities'] intentions and they hide everything,' she said.
Mokry analysed the official English translations of foreign policy documents released by Beijing from 2013 to 2019. According to her study findings, published in 2022, almost half of the documents contained differences between the English and Chinese versions, and most of those differences potentially altered the intended meaning.
But she said the two versions were not entirely different, and the key messages remained largely consistent because the official translations were 'carefully crafted' to align with Beijing's political objectives and diplomatic priorities.
Mokry found that the Chinese version usually signalled stronger and more assertive intentions while the English version came across as softer, since they targeted different audiences.
'The question is more about how the US government and also governments around the world can build up enough capacity to deal with the original Chinese texts instead of just relying on the official English translations,' she said.
Mokry said machine-learning tools could help to identify translation differences but it remained crucial to have experts available who could work with the original Chinese statements, point their colleagues to the nuances and add the interpretive context that went beyond linguistic skills.
To do that, she said it was important to understand the institution issuing the document and its role in the political system.
According to Wang Huiyao, founder and president of the Centre for China and Globalisation, a Beijing-based think tank, the historical and cultural differences that shape the values of Chinese and Western societies – and the way concepts are expressed and decoded – are the main reason for misperceptions when it comes to translation.
Wang said Chinese civilisation was rooted in agrarian traditions such as cultivating one's plot and favouring modesty, while Western cultures, influenced by nomadic and expansionist histories, tended to emphasise individualism, mobility and global outreach.
He noted that some of the terms used in Chinese political messaging could be hard for international audiences to grasp. But he said instead of just communicating those unfamiliar phrases Beijing could create new terms and concepts that might gain international acceptance if there was clear context and the ideas were framed in more globally relatable ways.
Wang gave the example of Beijing's renamed trade and infrastructure strategy, the Belt and Road Initiative.
When it was launched in 2013 it was known as One Belt, One Road. But that caused confusion because it was not a road but sea routes linking China's southern coast to East Africa, the Mediterranean and Latin America, while the 'belt' refers to a series of overland corridors connecting China with Central Asia, the Middle East and Europe.
It quietly became the Belt and Road Initiative in 2015 – a name that is now recognised globally – with the Chinese name left unchanged.
Wang said further efforts from both China and the US were needed to boost exchanges in education and tourism, ease visa restrictions, and allow more access for foreign media to promote mutual understanding.
He said far more Chinese had studied in America than Americans in China since the reform and opening-up began in the 1970s. According to Wang, that imbalance, with a limited number of Americans learning Chinese, had a serious impact on how well they could understand each other.
'Chinese people are much more familiar with the United States than Americans are with China,' he said.