Point of view and citation: Fourteen Chinese and English versions of the ‛same’ news story

Abstract

Fourteen versions of the same news story, a Xinhua release about Li Peng's meeting with George Bush, were selected for comparison from eleven Hong Kong newspapers and three from the People's Republic of China (PRC). Four are English language newspapers and the rest Chinese. Comparison of five features including switches in point of view, lamination, ambiguous quotation, bylining of a named reporter, and mention of setting in the lead revealed differences between English and Chinese texts in the structuring of the point of view of quoted newsmakers and in the citation of original sources. While the English language texts diverged most widely from the Renmin Ribao version, no single feature or combination of features could be used to distinguish a Chinese text from an English one. Two Chinese language papers that based their stories on a Reuter and Agence France Presse release differed in significant ways from the others, and the China Daily, a Chinese Communist Party organ published in English, uses unambiguous direct and indirect quotation, unlike the Renmin Ribao, also a government paper. These papers also differ in bylining practices. The clearest result of the study is that the quotation of the speech of others is a highly ambiguous matter in Chinese, while English journalists present the speech of newsmakers as unambiguous direct quotation