Constructive ambiguity and risk management in bilingual foreign-affairs texts. The case of “One China”

ABSTRACT

Constructive ambiguity occurs when a text is construed in different ways by different people and those people nevertheless agree on the text. Its use in foreign affairs can enable major issues to remain unresolved over long periods. One instance is the series of “One China” communiqués in which the United States and the People’s Republic of China have appeared to agree on the sovereignty of Taiwan. An important feature of this particular ambiguity is constituted by the two Chinese-language versions of the verb “acknowledge,” which effectively allow the interpretation that the US agrees with Beijing’s position. This shift can be analyzed linguistically in terms of the hypothetical non-translatability of performatives. It can also be approached politically in terms of a classical prediction delivered to King Croesus, whose hubris and subsequent failure to perceive the oracle’s ambiguity led to his downfall. A third analysis, in terms of risk management, suggests that the ambiguity is likely to be maintained by both sides, despite the different language versions, for as long as trade remains mutually beneficial. This study demonstrates how risk management can provide a more powerful explanation of constructive ambiguity than do narrowly linguistic or political analyses.

KEYWORDS:

• Ambiguity
• international agreements
• translation
• One China
• risk management

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

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Notes

1. Similar linguistic strategies accompanied the establishment of diplomatic relations between Australia and the People’s Republic of China. The first joint communiqué (Australian Government 1972) reads: “The Australian Government recognises the Government of the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal Government of China, acknowledges the position of the Chinese Government that Taiwan is a province of the People’s Republic of China, and has decided to remove its official representation from Taiwan” (Australian Government 1972, 1; italics ours), where “recognise” is a performative (although there is no definition of what “China” is being recognised) and “acknowledges” can also be a performative (but clearly does not imply agreement with the Chinese position thus acknowledge). The Chinese version of both these verbs is承认 (cheng ren) (P. R. China Ministry of Foreign Affairs 1972), as in the communiqués with the United States. The Chinese meaning thus stretches from acknowledgement to recognition to admittance to agreement.

2. This is one way to solve the problem of a translated performative. Another way, equally cunning, is to remove the start text from historical record by making it purely oral or otherwise unofficial. This was done with the “Six Assurances” that the United States gave Taiwan in July 1982. James Lilley, then director of America’s nominally unofficial representative agency in Taiwan, contacted Taiwan leader Chiang Ching-kuo and delivered President Reagan’s assurances orally, not in written form (see Feldman 2007, 2). The verb “to assure” can be a full performative, but the written Chinese notes of the meeting could not. At the same time, the Chinese notes cannot claim to be a full translation of a text whose existence was at the time unofficial, on the same level as an associated later “non-paper” saying that the United States had no plan to “set a date for termination of arms sales” (Feldman 2001, 78).

3. We prefer to talk about “foreign-affairs discourse” rather than “diplomatic discourse” here because the latter can be interpreted as exchanges between diplomats, notoriously with coded implicatures. The texts we are dealing with here may indeed be written by diplomats but they are also made available to the press and the wider public, which is why they play on possible misunderstandings by non-expert readers. We use “foreign affairs” to refer to that wider sense, where a public arena is involved.

4. The Iraqi transcript of Saddam Hussein’s meeting with US Ambassador April Glaspie on July 25 1990 records the latter as saying “we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait” (New York Times 1990, 19). This “no opinion” position is not unlike the US “acknowledgement” position with respect to Taiwan; it was dangerously open to misinterpretation.

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Notes on contributors

Bei Hu

Bei Hu is a doctoral candidate in Translation Studies at the University of Melbourne.

Anthony Pym

Anthony Pym is Professor of Translation Studies at the University of Melbourne. He is also Distinguished Professor of Translation and Intercultural Studies at Rovira i Virgili University, Spain. He was President of the European Society for Translation Studies from 2010 to 2016.