COVID-19-Combating English with Chinese Characteristics in the CAT’s Translations

During the COVID-19 outbreak, the China Academy of Translation translated and officially released five groups of Key Words to Understand China: The Fight Against COVID-19 for daily precautions, policy publicity, and information dissemination. Based on the translations and relevant data from Chinese and English media, this study makes a tentative analysis of the linguistic, ideological, and cultural features of English used in the translations. The findings are that China English is outstanding with respect to translating some Chinese-specific words and expressions in the translations, which generally results from the method of literal rendering. It is suggested that literal translation and transliteration can be used more frequently in English texts related to big events in order to strengthen the Chinese characteristics of China English as a major variety of world Englishes.