ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses whether concepts that are deeply culturally embedded can really be translated in a satisfactory manner. It presents a case study examining the Chinese policy-related expression wenming. While wenming has a cluster of complex meanings and uses in Chinese, it often ends up being translated into English simply as ‘civilised’. The case study follows a multimethod approach based on multiple corpora. A contrastive approach is particularly useful for unearthing the relationship between expressions and policy communication because there is significant linguacultural variation in the salience of certain comparable expressions in the communication of policies. The case study reveals the enormous complexity surrounding culturally embedded Chinese policy expressions like wenming.
