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Why did the Chinese Communist Party choose an accented translator for its recent new leadership press event?
Below is the CCTV (state media) livestream of the event, time stamped to the start of alternating Chinese / English speaking portions. It continues through when Xi begins speaking with the same translator about two minutes later.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=XPElpDddUWo&t=527
The translator, or maybe more fittingly the teleprompt reader, considering the translation was certainly done well ahead of the event, speaks with a clear Chinese-British accent. I would venture to guess that he had gone to university in the UK, and no earlier (i.e. emigrated for elementary or middle/high school). Further, he sounds young, and so it seems unlikely that he is an important party cadre who was chosen for political seniority.
Is there anything to be read into this personnel choice? Considering the event is bilingual and clearly aimed at the international audience, someone in charge of optimizing its success, I'd think, would select for basically two dimensions:
Political purity: no chance a prankster or saboteur would use the opportunity to shout anti-CCP slogans to embarrass the regime
Technical capability: no stage fright, clear enunciation, diction, volume, etc.
Considering how prominent this event was, I'm shocked that the party could not find someone trustworthy who also happened to speak English with no accent. Is it because #1 contradicts #2, whereby someone born in the US or UK could not be trusted?
I think it's fair to claim this is a nothingburger. But the CCP is highly choreographed, so this decision was surely intentional. Does it speak to its weakness, therefore, that it is unable to present a high-quality English speaker whom it can also trust politically?
Alternatively, does anyone think the choice of an accented translator was intentional? That is, the party subtly shows the world that while it wants to keep it informed, it does not care enough to optimize for the listening experience of its international audience?
If we're going to assume that it was intentional to send a message, the message was probably not "Fuck you, you have to listen to this awful ass accent" it was more like "A Chinese accent is a respectable high class accent appropriate to this kind of event." You were expecting an accent somewhere in the transatlantic newscaster to Northeastern US between Westchester, NY and Evanston, IL* ; you probably also would have accepted something very BBC newscaster, even though Americans would distinctly call that an accent. You would have been confused, unnerved, or offended if he had come up and delivered it in a non-Chinese accent: imagine if he delivered it with a southern drawl or an Indian quik-e-mart "thank you come again" or in surfer-dude with a litany of "brah" and "rad." Why is that? Because the unaccented English or the oxford English accent are considered high status, and the others are considered lower status. Unaccented English is the English of the wealthiest and most financially and culturally influential part of the United States, where the majority of the historically important educational institutions are located. Southern accents are for hicks, Indian accents for immigrants, surfer accents for burnout losers. Your spokesman typically speaks with a high class accent to emphasize that your organization is high class.
By using a mild Chinese accent where we expect to hear a high status accent, the Chinese are asserting that the mild Chinese accent is high status. All you English speakers, this is the way your corporate bosses are going to sound, the way your most important clients and suppliers will sound, the way the scientists you want to suck up to at research conferences will sound. They are trying to elevate the Chinese accented English above immigrant or FOBby exchange student, and associate it with power and prestige.
Alternatively, their knowledge of America is based entirely on American movies, and they assume that we think that they have their conferences in English with a mild Chinese accent, while Russians hold theirs with a mild but indistinct Eastern European accent.
*This is what we generally mean when we say "unaccented English" in the USA, but there are subtle gradients within even that relatively boring and mild area. Where I'm from most of the country would describe us as having no accent, I had a scoutmaster who could place you within twenty square miles in our county. He just had a freak talent for it. Perception occurs at the level of your baseline skill, what we perceive as an accent is relative to our experience and ability to perceive subtle differences. That guy just had a level of skill much much higher than the rest of us.
Speaking as someone in the UK, those people have a very pronounced accent. You call it unaccented since it's what has become normalised to your ears, but there is very much a "New Englander" accent.
Newscaster English is actually a Mid-Atlantic English, not New Englander. Yankees have a definite accent (actually, several) that isn't the national homogeneous English you hear in movies and on TV.
Even within the mid-atlantic, cities have distinctive lower class accents. It's only the educated suburbs that lose all or most noticeable accents. A Bronx or Long Island accent is distinct, as is a Philly accent, but I expect to get it from a contractor not a professor.
Thirty years ago New York City newscasters actually had New York City accents. They no longer do, however.
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