Journalism Studies
ISSN: 1461-670X (Print) 1469-9699 (Online) Journal homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/rjos20
Reshaping Protest Coverage Through Translation:
A Case Study of the 2019 Hong Kong Protests
Hao Mo
To cite this article: Hao Mo (17 Mar 2026): Reshaping Protest Coverage Through
Translation: A Case Study of the 2019 Hong Kong Protests, Journalism Studies, DOI:
10.1080/1461670X.2026.2643757
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2026.2643757
© 2026 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

Published online: 17 Mar 2026.

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Reshaping Protest Coverage Through Translation: A Case Study of the 2019 Hong Kong Protests
Hao Mo
School of Media, Language and Communication Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK

ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 31 May 2025
Accepted 5 March 2026
KEYWORDS
Protest paradigm; Hong
Kong protests; news translation; framing analysis; narrative theory; language and politics

ABSTRACT
Protest paradigm studies have yet to explore the crucial role of translation in disseminating protest news across languages and shaping public perceptions. This paper addresses this gap through a comparative analysis of BBC English reports on the 2019 Hong Kong protests and their translations by BBC Chinese. It examines how translation reshapes protest coverage through selective appropriation and labelling. The findings demonstrate that BBC Chinese produces a translated version seemingly tailored to the expectations of its target audience, resulting in a less explicit legitimisation of the protests. This paper contributes to the literature on the framing of protests in authoritarian states and reveals how the protest paradigm framework operates across linguistic and cultural contexts.
Introduction
In the summer of 2019, Hong Kong witnessed the largest protests in its history. These protests were triggered by the government’s proposed extradition bill that sought to allow criminal suspects to be extradited to Taiwan for trial (Purbrick 2019). However, given that the internationally adopted “One China Policy” considers Taiwan a jurisdiction in China (Kuo 2019), the Bill suggested that criminal suspects could be extradited to mainland China for trial. It quickly sparked widespread public concern that Hong Kong dissidents would face unfair political prosecution under the mainland judicial system (Lee et al. 2019). What began as largely peaceful demonstrations soon escalated into violent clashes involving protesters, police, and Hong Kong citizens.
Extensive research has demonstrated that mainstream media often delegitimise protests through a “routinized pattern or implicit template” known as the protest paradigm (McLeod and Hertog 1999, 310). Characterised by an emphasis on violence, reliance on official sources, and the invocation of public opinion, the protest paradigm portrays protesters as violent, deviant, and disruptive (McLeod and Hertog 1999). A growing body of literature, nevertheless, suggests that mainstream media do not always adhere to this
CONTACT Hao Mo hao.hm.mo@gmail.com School of Media, Language and Communication Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK
© 2026 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
paradigm. For instance, Western media tend to show a pro-challenger bias in favour of protests in authoritarian states (Baum and Zhukov 2015).
To date, protest paradigm studies have not considered the crucial role of translation in disseminating protest news across linguistic borders. For example, translation enables foreign-language media to communicate their narratives of the 2019 Hong Kong protests to Chinese readers, the majority of whom depend on Chinese-language sources for information. News translation is not merely linguistic transfer but also involves editing and adaptation. Researchers have found that translated narratives can diverge significantly from original ones (Barkho 2008; Kamyanets 2022; Valdeón 2019), potentially influencing how the same event is understood by different audiences.
This study addresses this gap through a case study of the 2019 Hong Kong protests. It conducts a comparative analysis of the original reports published by BBC English and their translations by BBC Chinese. The BBC is selected as it is a world-leading broadcaster that relies on translation for multilingual news production. The objectives are two-fold: first, to examine how protest coverage shifts during translation; and second, to identify the strategies employed in translation. The findings will reveal how the BBC navigates tensions between reporting protester violence and meeting audience expectations without delegitimising the protests. In doing so, this study contributes to the literature on Western media’s framing of protests in authoritarian states.
Literature Review
News Translation Research
Translation studies was once regarded as a sub-discipline of Applied Linguistics, and translation was narrowly viewed as linguistic transfer between languages (Schäffner 2013; van Doorslaer 2010a). However, since Bassnett and Lefevere (1990) proposed the idea of “cultural turn in translation”, scholarly discussion has shifted beyond linguistic equivalence to treat translation as “social, cultural and political acts” (Inghilleri 2005, 125). For example, cultural and religious texts cannot be translated without any mediation because target readers may struggle to interpret culture-specific references (Baker 2006). Literary texts may be selectively translated and mediated to serve political purposes (e.g. Liu 2015).
Translation is an integral part of news production, since it can be found at different news-making stages, from information gathering to news writing and editing (van Door- slaer 2010b). For instance, in the coverage of international events, journalists and editors frequently translate foreign-language sources, such as official statements and interviews. Many news organisations, such as the BBC, The New York Times (NYT), Euronews, and El País, rely extensively on translation to produce news in different languages. News translation is a complicated process that can be described as “summarizing, paraphrasing, transforming, supplementing, reorganizing and recontextualizing” (van Doorslaer 2013, 1047–1049).
Journalists and scholars outside translation studies tend to conceptualise translation as pure interlingual equivalence without adaptation to target audiences (Davier 2022). This is probably why most journalists distinguish their job function from that of translators and claim that they “do not do translations” (Tokalac 2023). Moreover, journalism and communication scholars view translation as a “secondary or tertiary activity” and rarely explore its role in news production (Valdeón 2023, 250).
Interdisciplinarity is a “defining feature of translation studies”, with scholars calling for integrated theoretical and methodological frameworks (Valdeón 2023, 245). Concepts drawn from journalism and communication studies have been employed to theorise and analyse the use of translation in news production, such as gatekeeping (e.g. Vuorinen 1997), framing (e.g. Baker 2006), and agenda setting (Valdeón 2021). However, translation remains underexplored in journalism and communication scholarship, resulting in little interaction between the two disciplines. Baumann, Gillespie, and Sreberny (2011) sought to highlight the role of translation in the 2011 special issue of Journalism dedicated to examining the translation practices of the BBC World Service. Yet no follow-up research has been conducted in the field of journalism and communication studies (Valdeón 2023).
BBC World Service
As a world-leading broadcaster launched in 1932, the BBC World Service (WS) delivers broadcasts and online news in more than 40 languages, such as Chinese, French, Russian, Spanish, and Arabic (BBC 2022). BBC Chinese (n.d.) provides news content in both simplified and traditional Chinese, offering daily news updates to Chinese audiences worldwide, including those in mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and diasporic communities.
Ethnographic studies show that the target readership plays a significant role in shaping how a report is translated by BBC WS. News deemed globally important or culturally relevant to the target audience is often selected for translation (Aktan and Nohl 2010). BBC WS journalists and editors need to adapt specific aspects of reports based on the assumed “knowledge, comprehension, and cultural reference points of the target audience” (Cheesman and Nohl 2011, 219). Consequently, translations should be appealing, culturally relevant, and easily comprehensible (Aktan and Nohl 2010). During translation, expla- natory/contextual information is added to facilitate comprehension, while culturally/ locally irrelevant information is omitted (Aktan and Nohl 2010; Cheesman and Nohl 2011).
Regarding sensitive topics, tension grows between satisfying the expectations of different target audiences and appearing impartial in the eyes of the protagonists. For example, Barkho (2008) found that regarding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, BBC Arabic downplayed casualties on both sides while the English service minimised Palestinian losses. Additionally, the “militancy” label, consistently used by BBC English to characterise the Palestinians killed or injured by Israeli forces, was absent from the Arabic service. These significant differences also led to criticism from the Arabic audience, who perceived the BBC as selective and biased in reporting Middle Eastern news (Jaber and Baumann 2011).
Barkho’s (2008) research demonstrates that in meeting audience expectations, translation can alter the ideological stance of original stories. Similarly, Valdeón (2019) noticed that BBC Mundo selectively translated English coverage of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, emphasising the negative portrayal of her leadership and thus subverting the original balanced English narratives. Kamyanets (2022) found that in translating political news, the BBC Ukrainian service stayed ideologically the same as the English service, but the Russian service omitted explicit or implicit criticism of the Russian government to cater to its target audience.
The Protest Paradigm
Hertog and McLeod (1995, 2001) and McLeod (2007) identify three key characteristics of the protest paradigm. First, mainstream media underscore clashes between protesters and police, as well as the drama of the protests. This is because radical actions by protesters are considered “newsworthy”. Second, they rely heavily on official sources, conforming to the norm of objectivity while downplaying the dissents that challenge powerful institutions. Third, they construct public opinion that depicts protesters as deviant from social norms and values. Gruber’s (2021) literature review confirms the prevalence of these characteristics in protest coverage, which often delegitimise and marginalise protest groups.
Meanwhile, a growing body of literature suggests that mainstream media can deviate from the protest paradigm. Analysing UK press coverage from 1992 to 2017, Gruber (2023) found that although most newspapers still adhered to the protest paradigm, an increasing number used legitimising frames such as causes and grievances. Lee’s (2014) research on the coverage of protests in Hong Kong from 2001 to 2012 revealed that local newspapers became less negative about protests over time, and not all types of protests were delegitimised. Brown and Harlow (2019) discovered that protest topics could influence the US mainstream media’s coverage of domestic protests: those about racial issues are delegitimised the most, whereas gender protests are legitimised the most. Political systems also have an impact on protest coverage, as protests in authoritarian regimes are rarely legitimised by domestic media (Boyle, McLeod, and Armstrong 2012).
While most studies focus on English-language media, research has also examined coverage in other languages, though not from a translation perspective. Examples include Spanish and Greek newspapers’ coverage of the Indignados protests (Kyriakidou and Olivas Osuna 2017), Chinese media’s framing of Hong Kong protests (as discussed below), French newspapers’ reporting of the Yellow Vests Movement (Jebril and El Bouzidi 2024), and Portuguese newspapers’ coverage of Brazil’s 2013 protests (Shahin et al. 2016). The findings reveal that, regardless of language, it is the ideological leaning of the news outlet that significantly influences whether protests are delegitimised or not.
Mainstream media tend to support protests that align with their ideological stances or the interests of political elites (Kim and Shahin 2020; McLeod 2007). Those in Western democracies favour anti-government protests in authoritarian states (Baum and Zhukov 2015). Nonetheless, they are likely to delegitimise anti-government protests within liberal democracies (Szulecka and Szulecki 2022). For example, the NYT shows a negative stance towards the Yellow Vest Movement, which challenged dominant neoliberal ideologies in the West (Li, Cassard, and Holmes 2023).
Deviation from the protest paradigm indicates that its characteristics need to be evaluated critically. Harlow and Brown (2023) argue for distinguishing between violence by protesters and violence against protesters. Protester violence needs to be treated critically when used as a strategic tactic in reaction to police violence and state oppression (Harlow and Brown 2023). Public opinion can be supportive of protesters, and hence it is important to examine its evaluative dimension (Shahin et al. 2016). Although official sources tend to be used for invoking status quo norms (McLeod and Hertog 1999), it is important to identify which status quo is challenged. The status quo in authoritarian regimes is often viewed as illegitimate and unsustainable by Western media (Baum and Zhukov 2015). Scholars such as Li, Cassard, and Holmes (2023) suggest shifting attention toward exploring the characteristics that contribute to legitimising protests.
Framing of Protests in Authoritarian States
So far, research on how Western media cover protests in authoritarian states remains limited. Scholars of communication studies and linguistics have applied framing theory or critical discourse analysis (CDA) to examine how the US and UK media cover protests in Egypt, Hong Kong, and Iran. Despite differences in the analytical frameworks and metrics, the results consistently show an emphasis on conflict and violence. Some studies indicate that more attention is given to state violence and police brutality (Adeg- bola, Gearhart, and Cho 2022; Baum and Zhukov 2015; Wang 2022).
Harlow and Johnson (2011) found that the NYT relied on official sources and explained the causes in its coverage of the 2011 Egyptian protests. Similar patterns are observed in the UK and US newspapers’ coverage of the 2014 Hong Kong protests, although UK newspapers appear more balanced than their US counterparts, with the latter showing a clearly positive attitude toward protesters (Du, Zhu, and Yang 2018; Veneti, Karadimitriou, and Poulakidakos 2016). In their study of the 2017–2018 Iranian protests, Adegbola, Gearhart, and Cho (2022) observed that AFP, Reuters, and AP largely adopted a neutral stance on the movement and offered little space for protesters’ voices.
Regarding the 2019 Hong Kong protests, Li, Cassard, and Holmes (2023) discovered that the NYT and Wall Street Journal legitimised the protests by “highlighting issues and peacefulness despite violence”, “blaming violence on authorities”, “backing protester causes”, and “understating negative aspects of the movement” (206). Wang and Ma (2021) found that the NYT framed the protests as a democratic movement against communist authoritarianism. The NYT’s pro-democracy stance on Hong Kong protests differs from its balanced account of the Egyptian protests.
Media framing can influence people’s perception and evaluation of protests. In their analysis of English and Chinese tweets, Dong, Walker, and Liu (2026) found that protester violence did not reduce public support for the movement but did diminish public opposition to state oppression. In other words, while public sentiment towards protesters remained positive, state crackdowns did not trigger a significant backlash. Gueorguiev and Liu’s (2024) survey experiment showed that mainland Chinese respondents expressed sympathy towards protesters when the demonstrations were framed as a civil rights movement, but this support declined with protesters’ increased use of violence.
To sum up, disseminating protest stories across linguistic and cultural borders often involves varying degrees of editing and adaptation to meet the expectations of the target audience. This may result in significant differences between the original and translated narratives, and hence the same event may be perceived differently by different target audiences. Highly visible protester violence could be a challenge for the BBC in its reporting of the 2019 Hong Kong protests since it needs to appear impartial and meet audience expectations without delegitimising the protests. By analysing the English reports and their Chinese translations, this study examines how the BBC’s English and Chinese services cover incidents of conflict and violence while catering to their respective audiences. Two research questions will be answered:
1.		How does translation reshape news coverage of the 2019 Hong Kong protests?
2.		How are protest paradigm components omitted, added, and labelled in translation?
Methodology
This study examines the period from 1 November to 30 November 2019 for two major reasons. First, as a month of escalating violence, November provides an ideal opportunity to explore how the BBC navigates the tensions between reporting protester violence and meeting audience expectations without delegitimising the protests. Second, as conflict and controversy tend to attract media attention due to their news value (Oliver and Maney 2000), a high volume of news reports is expected to have been produced, offering sufficient data for analysing how translation reshapes the coverage of the 2019 Hong Kong protests.
Data Collection
Google Advanced Search was used to collect English and Chinese news articles published by the BBC. LexisNexis, a platform widely used for news data collection, was not utilised because the retrieved articles do not contain images, hyperlinks, or videos, which were used for analysis in this study. The keywords used to retrieve relevant news data are protest and demonstration, and their Chinese equivalents,抗议[protest] and示威/游 行 [demonstration]. A Chinese article was considered the translation of an English article if they shared similarities in headline, audiovisual content, and most importantly, the body text. Examples are provided below to demonstrate such similarities, with back-translations provided by the author to allow comparisons.
As shown in Example 1, the English and Chinese news articles have similar expressions —“to close all schools” and “学校全面停课[all schools to be closed]”.
Example 1.	
English Headline	Chinese Headline	Back-translation
Hong Kong to close all	香港示威活动影响升级:学校全 Growing impact of Hong Kong protests: All schools amid escalating	面停课,大学校园冲突不断,内 schools to be closed and mainland students protests	地学生撤离	fleeing amid escalating conflict on campus
There are not always similar expressions in the headlines. As illustrated in Figure 1, the literal translation of the Chinese headline is “Continued escalation of Hong Kong Protests: Police officer fires live rounds at a protester, citizen set on fire”. Yet both news articles use the same video clips of the police shooting.

Figure 1. Screenshot of English and Chinese news articles. Source: Screenshots from BBC News and BBC Chinese websites.

Most importantly, the body text of the English and Chinese articles shows clear traces of translation. In Example 2, much of the first English excerpt matched the Chinese content, with some additions and omissions.
Example 2.	

ST

TT

Back-translation

Monday’s protests followed a weekend of vigils and demonstrations after a 22- year-old student protester died on Friday. Alex Chow had been in hospital since he fell from the ledge of a car park during a police operation a week ago.

示威活动在周一持续。一周 前, 22岁的香港科技大学学 生周梓乐在一次警方执法行 动期间堕楼,之后一直在医 院接受救治。医院上周五宣 布他已经死亡。

Protests continued Monday. A week ago, Alex Chow, a 22-year-old student at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, fell from a building during a police operation and had stayed in the hospital since then. He was certified dead by the hospital last Friday.

In Example 3, the English excerpt of a statement by the then Chinese Ambassador to the UK, Liu Xiaoming, and the Chinese translation show that the information is faithfully reproduced with only minor adjustments in how the ambassador is addressed.
Example 3.
ST	TT	Back-translation	
Mr Liu firmly supported Hong Kong’s police, saying the illegal protests had “nothing to do with so-called democracy or freedom”.	刘晓明对香港警方表示	Liu Xiaoming firmly supported the Hong
坚定支持,他说,非法示	Kong police, stating that the illegal
威“与所谓的民主、自	demonstrations had “nothing to do with
由无关”。	so-called democracy or freedom.”	

The BBC did not always work with one-on-one translation. As shown in Appendix 1, in some cases, an English article (e.g. E5) has two corresponding Chinese translations (C5 and C6), or one translated Chinese article (e.g. C7) results from two English articles (E6 and E7). Consequently, there are ten pairs of source and target texts, consisting of 13 English articles (12,411 words) and 12 Chinese articles (27,465 words).
Narrative Framing Analysis
According to Entman (1993), “to frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient” (52). News translation can be seen as a framing process because information in one language is selectively translated, edited, and rewritten into another. Narrative framing strategies, developed by Baker (2006) from sociological and communication studies, have been extensively used to investigate the framing of political conflict through translation. Two of the strategies are highly relevant to the current study:
(1)		Framing by selective appropriation is the addition and omission of certain information.
(2)		Framing by labelling refers to the use of “a lexical item, term or phrase to identify a person, place, group, event or any other key element in a narrative” (122).
Framing in news translation occurs at textual and paratextual levels. When used together in news translation research, textual framing analysis refers to analysing the body text of a news article. In this study, the unit of textual framing analysis is a sentence, which is a common practice in translation research. Textual framing involves the selective appropriation of the body text and labelling of different news actors, such as protesters, police, and citizens.
The concept of paratext is loosely defined in translation studies. Previous research has treated headlines, images, and captions as paratexts (e.g. Ping 2020; Zhang 2013). This study adopts a broader definition to include headlines, subheadings, hyperlinks, and audiovisual elements (e.g. images, captions, and videos) as the unit of paratextual framing analysis. Paratextual framing involves the selective appropriation and labelling of these elements.
Coding and Protest Paradigm Components
All original English news articles were compiled into a single file named the source text (ST), and all their Chinese translations into another single file named the target text (TT). NVivo 12 software was used to assist in the coding of each sentence, headline, subheading, hyperlink, image, caption, and video in both files, with coding decisions made manually by the author.
The codes used in this study, derived from existing research on the protest paradigm, comprise five protest paradigm components. Conflict and violence refer to the various forms of conflict involving protesters, police, and citizens, the violence committed by police and protesters, arrests, vandalism, and socioeconomic consequences. Public opinion refers to the views of the general public on the authorities/police or the protesters in the form of formal surveys or generic statements.
Official sources are representatives from different governments and institutions, including the authorities, administrations, international organisations, experts, scholars, and news media. These were further categorised as pro-establishment, neutral, or pro-protester depending on their attitudes toward police, protesters, as well as their respective supporters (e.g. the Hong Kong government and Western democracies). For instance, official sources that explicitly criticise police brutality or sympathise with protesters were coded as pro-protester. Official sources that critically evaluate both sides, rather than favouring either side, were coded as neutral.
While the three components mentioned above are commonly used by mainstream media, the other two components, namely background and protesters’ voices, appear less frequently in protest coverage. Background refers to news media explaining what caused the protests, conflict and violence, including historical references. Protesters’ voices refer to people participating in protests expressing their views on the situation. In most cases, these components contribute to legitimising protests.
For audiovisual content, an image was coded according to its visual focus, the caption, and the surrounding (para)texts. For example, a close-up image of a detained protester, accompanied by the description “faces of people arrested by police as they tried to leave the university”, implies confrontation between the protester and the police (E9). Therefore, the image was coded as conflict and violence. Videos were assigned one or multiple codes depending on whether on-screen texts, images, and sound communicated more than one frame. For instance, in the video “These Hong Kong university students fought police on Tuesday with bows and arrows”, on-screen texts and images depict conflict and violent clashes, while protesters articulate their views on and reasons for the use of radical tactics (E6). Therefore, this video was coded as both “conflict and violence” and “protesters’ voices”.
After the texts and paratexts in the English and Chinese files were segmented according to the five protest paradigm components, the next step was to analyse the framing of protest news by comparing corresponding segments in the English and Chinese files. Selective appropriation was measured by the addition or omission of the five components. Labelling was measured by the lexical choices used to characterise protest- related issues and various news actors, including protesters, officials, and citizens.
Results
This section presents findings on the framing of the 2019 Hong Kong protests through selective appropriation and labelling at both textual and paratextual levels. The qualitative findings—which include numerical tallies and percentages of interpretive codes across the data set—provide a detailed analysis of the (dis)similarities in protest coverage between the source and target texts and illustrate how framing strategies are used in translation.
Textual Framing
Figure 2 illustrates how BBC English and BBC Chinese report on the 2019 Hong Kong protests. For instance, 42% means that 42% of the source text was assigned to the “conflict and violence” code. The varying proportions of these five components between source and target texts suggest that translation leads to a shift in the protest coverage.
BBC English devotes 42% of its content to conflict and violence, reporting on the violence committed by both protesters and police, as well as clashes involving protesters, the police, and citizens. Considerable attention is given to the protester-police standoff at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), particularly the chaos caused by the radical

Figure 2. Proportions of protest paradigm components in source and target texts.

tactics used by both sides. It also highlights a knife attack by a citizen on protesters and two incidents on 11 November: the police shooting of a protester and a senior citizen being set ablaze by a group of demonstrators.
Background information, which is often ignored by mainstream media, accounts for 17% of the English source text. Overall, it underscores that as a former British colony, Hong Kong enjoys more freedoms than mainland China. It attributes the protests to widespread public concern over the erosion of freedoms and outlines protesters’ demands, including calls for democratic reform and an investigation into police brutality. Such a causal interpretation frames the protests as a pro-democracy movement. Background information appears 12 times in the source text, specifically in 12 out of the 13 English news articles, taking two forms: sectioned and embedded. A sectioned background is provided under subheadings: either “Why are there protests in Hong Kong” (8 times) or “Some vital background on Hong Kong” (once). An embedded background is woven into body paragraphs (7 times).
Official sources constitute a smaller proportion of the news content (13%). The majority of the official sources quoted by BBC English comment on the PolyU standoff. Chinese and Hong Kong government officials, along with Hong Kong police, criticise protesters for violent behaviour that undermines the rule of law and order. UK and UN authorities call for both sides to de-escalate tensions, provide humanitarian aid to injured protesters, and resolve the conflict through dialogue. BBC English also quotes many official sources from Hong Kong and Chinese authorities condemning the act of setting a senior citizen on fire and defending the police shooting.
BBC English provides very little space for protesters to voice their grievances (3%). Some protesters perceive their struggle as a defence of political freedom and rights. In particular, three reports by BBC correspondents inside PolyU (see E9, E10, and E13) focus on giving a voice to the trapped protesters. These reports include direct and indirect quotations in which protesters share the difficult situations they faced, their thoughts on the standoff, and their concerns about facing rioting charges if they surrendered.
Public opinion, represented by students and other citizens, accounts for only 2% of the English content. Selected university students called for an investigation into the death of Alex Chow, who fell off a car park during police operations. They also expressed solidarity with protesters besieged in PolyU. Other Hong Kong citizens included in the source text unanimously support the protesters.
In comparison, BBC Chinese also focuses on conflict and violence, but to a far lesser extent (24%). It relies heavily on official sources, which comprise 36% of the target text. Public opinion occupies only a small proportion (5%), while legitimising components are notably limited: background information and protesters’ voices account for only 5% and 1% of the target text, respectively.
In some cases, BBC Chinese translates the English content with slight editing (see Examples 2 and 3). More frequently, BBC Chinese reshuffles, omits, or supplements the source information. Four patterns can be identified from the two framing strategies: substitution of sources from other media, diversification of official sources and public opinion, omission of legitimising components, and neutralised labelling.
Substitution of Sources from Other Media
BBC English draws on a wide range of sources from other English-language media, including South China Morning Post (SCMP), Hong Kong Free Press (HKFP), AFP, Reuters, and Global Times. These sources are frequently cited to provide extra details for incidents of conflict and violence. They sometimes appear in the coverage of public opinion. However, BBC Chinese does not translate these external sources. As illustrated in Example 4, BBC English cites both SCMP and HKFP to add details to the knife attack, but the sources are omitted during translation.
Example 4.
ST	TT
One of the victims, a woman, told the South China Morning Post that the suspect drew a knife after arguing omitted with her sister and her husband, who were also injured. The Hong Kong Free Press reported that that attacker was a Mandarin-speaking pro-Beijing supporter. (E2, BBC English, 3 November 2019)
Instead, BBC Chinese substitutes these sources with counterparts from Chinese- language media. These include mainland Chinese outlets such as Xinhua News Agency (XNA) and Huanqiu Shibao, and Hong Kong outlets such as Ming Pao and HK01. Yet these attributions are used in the coverage of conflict and violence as well as official sources, rather than the coverage of public opinion. As shown in Example 5, BBC Chinese adds XNA’s commentary on the campus clashes at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), which was published by the Chinese service of XNA on 14 November 2019.

Example 5.
TT	Back-translation	
这一声明发出之前,中国官方新华社刊发评论文章:	The statement came after China’s state-owned Xinhua News	
“香港的大学校园不是法外之地”,称香港的大学校 园是教书育人之地,不是暴徒罪犯“庇护所”, “包括 校长在内的中大相关人士是否欠市民一个交代?! ” (C8, BBC Chinese, 15 November 2019)	Agency published a commentary entitled “Hong Kong University Campuses Are not a Lawless Frontier”. The article says that university campuses are a place for education rather than a “sanctuary” for criminal rioters. “Do those in charge of CUHK, including the president, not owe the citizens an explanation?!”	

Diversification of Official Sources and Public Opinion
As shown in Figure 3, BBC English cites 31 pro-establishment and four neutral official sources. However, it does not include any official sources that favour protesters. During translation, BBC Chinese adds 22 pro-establishment official sources (as illustrated in Example 5) while omitting five. Notably, it also adds 24 pro-protester official sources and four neutral sources, reflecting a diversity of opinion.
Three conflictual events, the standoff at PolyU and the two incidents on 11 November 2019, receive most coverage in BBC English and BBC Chinese. Accordingly, most of the added official sources are cited to comment on these incidents. Meanwhile, some official sources are quoted to remark on the death of student protester Alex Chow, which are absent from the source texts.
The inclusion of these additional official sources creates competing narratives in the target text. Pro-protester official sources describe the police shooting as a case of police brutality and emphasise the importance of protecting Hong Kong’s political rights guaranteed by the “one country, two systems” principle. In contrast, pro-

Figure 3. Number of official sources in source and target texts.

establishment sources further accentuate criticism of protesters for undermining the rule of law and order in the source text. Protesters are also accused of colluding with external forces, particularly the US and the UK, to separate Hong Kong from China. Neutral sources urge both sides to de-escalate the conflict through dialogue and avoid using violence.
In the target text, pro-establishment official sources are limited to only Chinese and Hong Kong government officials, the police, and Chinese state-owned media. In contrast, pro-protester representatives come from various backgrounds, including Taiwanese politicians and scholars, Hong Kong university leaders and student union representatives, Hong Kong’s opposition party and pro-democracy groups, and both local and international NGOs. Neutral official sources are represented by government officials from the UK, the US, and Australia. This composition subtly suggests that the pro-establishment camp represents a minority view, while the pro-protester or neutral camps represent the views of a broader, more diverse majority.
Regarding public opinion, while BBC English includes only Hong Kong citizens who unanimously support the protesters, BBC Chinese incorporates voices from mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan to express views critical of both protesters and police. Those who support protesters are presented with clear identities, such as a mother, a woman, ora student. Those supportive of the police are presented anonymously and collectively as mainland netizens and Taiwanese people. This difference is illustrated in Example 6.
Example 6.
ST	TT	Back-translation

一名女士对BBC中文表示,她担心警方会在理工大
学采取”大搜捕”行动…她指出,虽然学生暴力
升级,有破坏公物和伤害他人,但她仍然支持这 些示威者。(C9, 17 November 2019)
有大陆网友评论: “暴徒已经失去了人性,必须坚决 打击”、“完全疯狂失控了,应当用强力手段恢复 秩序”…一派［台湾］人支持警方,认为唯有警方 强势介入才能平息示威者的抗争…(C6, 12 November 2019)

A woman told BBC Chinese that she was worried that the police would make “mass arrests” at PolyU….She pointed out that despite the escalation of student violence, vandalism, and attacks on others, she still supported these demonstrators.
Some mainland netizens commented: “The rioters have lost humanity and must be resolutely cracked down on”; “They have absolutely gone mad, so order must be restored with force”. One group of [Taiwanese] people supports the police and believes that only strong police intervention can quell the protests.

Omission of Legitimising Components
Research has shown that background and protesters’ voices often contribute to legitimising protests. However, as shown in Figure 2, BBC Chinese reduces the proportions of these two legitimising components. Background information is translated only once, appearing in the Chinese news article titled “香港示威活动影响升级：学校全面停课,大学校园冲突不断, 内地学生撤离” [Growing impact of Hong Kong protests: All schools to be closed and mainland students fleeing amid escalating conflict on campus]. As mentioned earlier, the source text includes reports by three BBC correspondents, which share the stories of protesters trapped inside PolyU. These stories are not translated for Chinese readers.
Neutralised Labelling
In most cases, BBC English employs the terms “protests” and “demonstrations”, occasionally referring to them as “anti-government protests” (six times) and “pro-democracy protests” (four times). Similarly, BBC Chinese uses the labels “抗议” [protests] and “示威” [demonstrations]. However, BBC Chinese applies the label “反政府示威” [anti-government demonstrations] only once and does not use the label “民主抗议” [pro-democracy protests] or “反政府抗议” [anti-government protests].
Additionally, BBC Chinese removes the modifiers used to label news actors, which highlight their political stances on the protests. BBC English sometimes characterises protesters as “pro-democracy activists” or “anti-government protesters”. It uses the “proBeijing supporter” label to characterise the man attacking protesters with a knife and the citizen being set on fire. These “pro-democracy”, “pro-Beijing”, and “anti-government” modifiers are removed by BBC Chinese.
Paratextual Framing: Emphasising Conflict and Violence
Selective appropriation is also used at the paratextual level, including the translation of headlines, subheadings, hyperlinks, and audiovisual materials. As shown in Appendix 1, 11 of the 13 English headlines focus on conflict and violence, compared with 9 of the 12 Chinese headlines. While an English headline typically consists of a single sentence, a Chinese headline is usually composed of two or more sentences, often including extra details. English headlines are translated with varying degrees of adaptation to make the Chinese versions sound natural and idiomatic to the target audience.
Half of the English subheadings introduce the audience to texts about conflict and violence. Many English subheadings are also used to introduce the background and official sources. As discussed in the previous section, during translation, details of conflict/vio- lence and background information are omitted in the target text, while the number of official sources increases substantially. Accordingly, the majority of the Chinese subheadings signpost official sources.
BBC English uses hyperlinks to direct readers to two articles elaborating the background 11 times, including Hong Kong’s history, the “one country, two systems” policy, the nature of the protests, and protesters’ demands, framing the movement as a prodemocracy struggle against the erosion of freedoms. In contrast, BBC Chinese does not provide any hyperlink to background information.
Regarding audiovisual framing, images and videos are accompanied by texts that provide supplementary or explanatory information. BBC English uses 54 images in its protest coverage, with 43 portraying conflict and violence among protesters, police, and citizens. Sixteen video clips of conflict and violence are used to depict escalating tensions between different news actors: the knife attack, police shooting, and protester-police clashes on campus. Some of these videos employ more than one frame. The video “How Hong Kong got trapped in a cycle of violence” elaborates background information, featuring experts analysing how and why the initially peaceful protests escalated into violence as a result of police brutality, the government’s unkept promises, and protesters’ reactions. The video used as a coding example in the Methodology section presents protesters’ voices. Both videos are used three times by BBC English.
In comparison, BBC Chinese uses a total of 80 images, replicating many of those used by BBC English along with additional visuals. Similar to BBC English, images portraying conflict and violence remain dominant (61 in total), although textual coverage of conflict and violence is significantly reduced. Video framing is used far less frequently: only two video clips are retained, featuring the police shooting and protesters fleeing PolyU. An English-language interview with a former senior Hong Kong official, subtitled in Chinese, is added to provide official perspectives on the conflict. BBC Chinese also adds two Chinese-subtitled videos, which contain images of the protester-police standoff at PolyU (conflict and violence) and journalists’ interviews with protesters who shared their opinion on the situation (protesters’ voices).
Discussion
In the coverage of the 2019 Hong Kong protests, BBC English reports extensively on conflict and violence at both textual and paratextual levels, with details provided for the most sensational events. BBC Chinese makes frequent use of images depicting conflict and violence. The emphasis on conflict and violence has also been observed in other studies on Western media’s coverage of protests in authoritarian states (e.g. Adeg- bola, Gearhart, and Cho 2022; Baum and Zhukov 2015; Li, Cassard, and Holmes 2023). This is likely because conflict and violence are often considered newsworthy by mainstream media and hence more likely to attract their attention (Boyle, McLeod, and Armstrong 2012; McLeod 2007).
Conversely, protesters’ voices receive very limited coverage, a practice that is also observed in Western news agencies’ reporting on the 2017–2018 Iranian protests (Adeg- bola, Gearhart, and Cho 2022). One possible explanation is the difficulty of interviewing Hong Kong protesters on the ground in a month of escalating clashes: in the English reports, protesters’ voices are reported by correspondents with access to the campus besieged by the police.
However, BBC English deviates from the protest paradigm by providing background information in the body text and through hyperlinks in 12 out of its 13 articles. The protests are framed as a pro-democracy movement, and a video is used three times to critically evaluate violence as a result of police brutality, unfulfilled government promises, and protesters’ radicalisation. These can be seen as efforts to facilitate the global audience’s comprehension of a local event (Cheesman and Nohl 2011). Moreover, background information highlights the values of democracy and freedom, which are ideologically relevant to the Western audience.
The English coverage cites only pro-establishment and neutral official sources. Meanwhile, BBC Chinese supplements the target text with abundant official sources, including pro-protester voices, thus presenting a broader diversity of opinion. This divergence may be shaped by considerations of relevance to global and local audiences. The positions of key stakeholders and authoritative voices, such as the Chinese, Hong Kong, and UK governments, the police, and the UN, seem most directly relevant to the global audience. In comparison, the additional views of government and non-govern- ment representatives from Australia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and NGOs could provide the Chinese audience with both locally relevant and international perspectives. This broader sourcing is accompanied by more diverse opinions. Similarly, relevance to the target audience could also explain the diversification of public opinion in the Chinese coverage.
The English reports frequently employ sources from other English-language media such as Reuters, AFP, and SCMP, mainly to provide additional details for different instances of conflict and violence. Yet during translation, BBC Chinese substitutes these sources with local, Chinese-language media sources from China and Hong Kong. Consequently, BBC Chinese still highlights conflict and violence, but to a far lesser extent. This seems to be an attempt to localise the protest news for the target audience. Similarly, Davier (2014) found that quotations are less likely to be translated and are replaced with a quotation in the same language as the target text.
Legitimising components, namely background and many protesters’ voices, are omitted or replaced textually and paratextually during translation. First, the omission of background likely results from the assumption that Chinese readers are familiar with it because information already known to target readers is often eliminated (Bielsa 2007). Second, BBC Chinese omits a repeatedly occurring video and three correspondent reports, which include protesters’ voices, but adds two different Chinese-subtitled videos. These adjustments might result from BBC Chinese’s sourcing preferences and perception of what content is more relevant to the target audience.
Highlighting violence without providing background information has implications for public perception of and support for the protests. This style of protest coverage resembles that of China’s state-owned media, which has used images and videos of protester violence to provoke nationalist sentiments and hostility toward the protesters (Myers and Mozur 2019). An emphasis on protester violence reduces public support for the 2019 Hong Kong protests among mainland Chinese people (Gueorguiev and Liu 2024). However, providing adequate background information can counter state propaganda, offer alternative perspectives, and evoke public sympathy.
At the textual level, BBC Chinese prioritises official sources as newsworthy content for its Chinese readership. At the paratextual level, conflict and violence dominate headlines, images, and videos. Through translation, the legitimising component of background is omitted both textually and paratextually. Alternatively, legitimisation is conveyed implicitly with the addition of many official sources favouring protesters, which also represent the views of a broader, more diverse majority. Through labelling, BBC Chinese removes the evaluative “pro-democracy”, “pro-Beijing”, and “anti-government” modifiers that characterise the protests and distinguish between news actors. These practices suggest that BBC Chinese distances itself from explicitly sympathising with demonstrators, weakening the ideology embedded in the English coverage. Such ideological divergence has also been identified in the translation of political news by the BBC’s Spanish, Arabic, and Russian services (e.g. Barkho 2008; Kamyanets 2022; Valdeón 2019).
Conclusion
Focusing on the 2019 Hong Kong protests, the current research examined how translation reshapes protest coverage through a comparative analysis of BBC English and BBC Chinese news. It reaffirms previous research by providing further evidence that Western media tend to legitimise protests in authoritarian states, while showing that such legitimisation takes different forms across languages. Through the selective appropriation and labelling of different protest paradigm components, BBC Chinese produces a translated version seemingly tailored to the expectations of its target audience. Consequently, the protests are legitimised in a less explicit way, and the ideology embedded in the English coverage is weakened. Future studies could explore legitimising patterns—the ways in which protest paradigm components interact to produce favourable coverage of protests in authoritarian states. Examples identified in this study include emphasising background despite conflict and violence, amplifying pro-protester voices amid a diversity of opinions, and including protesters’ voices.
This study extends protest paradigm research beyond its monolingual scope. It indicates that the protest paradigm operates as a dynamic rather than uniform framework across linguistic and cultural contexts. The interlingual transfer of this framework is not only shaped by ideology but also by audience expectations. In this process, protest paradigm components may be accentuated, downplayed, relabelled, or diversified according to their social, cultural, and political relevance to different target audiences, while conflict and violence continue to dominate protest coverage. Due to the varying coverage, the same protests may be perceived differently, ultimately influencing public support and the perceived legitimacy and success of the protests.
This study is limited by its qualitative approach to framing analysis, which provides rich interpretative insights but limits the generalisability of the findings. It focuses on a single month, during which the protests escalated into violent clashes. However, the 2019 Hong Kong protests started peacefully before turning violent in response to excessive police force. Therefore, protest coverage may vary before and after the escalation of conflicts. Future research could adopt a mixed-method approach to examine different stages of the protests across languages. Additionally, researchers could conduct ethnographic studies to understand the BBC’s translation practices and contextualise the narrative framing strategies adopted during translation.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive and insightful comments, which have significantly improved the quality of this article.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Funding
This work was supported by the University of East Anglia Faculty of Arts and Humanities PGR Studentship.
ORCID
Hao Mo http://orcid.org/0009-0000-6772-1070
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Appendix 1. Headlines of source texts (ST) and target texts (TT)
Number	News Headline	
ST-1 TT-1
ST-2 TT-2 ST-3 TT-3 ST-4 TT-4 ST-5 TT-5	E1. Hong Kong protests: China’s leaders send message to protesters
C1.香港示威持续:再有抗议集会警方施放催泪弹
E2. Hong Kong protests: Knife attacker bites man’s ear after stabbing four
C2.香港示威:太古城流血事件多人受伤区议员被咬掉耳朵
E3. Hong Kong: Xi expresses “high degree of confidence” in Lam
C3.香港示威以来习近平首见林郑月娥: “高度信任”并“充分肯定”
E4. Hong Kong student’s death sparks impromptu protests and vigils
C4.香港示威:市民悼念堕楼大学生入夜后变冲突
E5. Hong Kong protests: Two people in critical condition after day of chaos
C5.香港示威持续升级:警察实弹射伤示威者另有市民被纵火烧伤
C6.香港抗议:警方开枪与示威者烧人纵火,各方反应突显的不同极端	
TT-6	E6. Hong Kong protests: Rule of law on “brink of collapse”, police say E7. Hong Kong to close all schools amid escalating protests	
TT-6 ST-7 TT-7 ST-8
TT-8 ST-9	C7.香港示威活动影响升级:学校全面停课,大学校园冲突不断,内地学生撤离
E8. Hong Kong protests: Man dies after being hit “by hard object” during protests
C8.香港抗议盘点本周最新出现的五个重大情况
E9. Campus clashes as Hong Kong protest intensifies
C9.香港示威:理工大学“围城攻坚”警察和示威者暴力冲突不断
E10. Hong Kong: Protesters and police in fiery stand-off at university
E11. Hong Kong Polytechnic University: Police fire tear gas on protesters leaving site
E12. Hong Kong Polytechnic University: Images from inside as siege nears end	
TT-9
ST-10
TT-10	C10.香港示威:理工大学爆发严重冲突后,警方包围校园,数百示威者被困
E13. Hong Kong Polytechnic University: Protesters still inside as standoff continues
C11.香港理工大学“围城”情况汇总:仍有上百人被困,数百名抗议者被拘
C12.近观香港理工大学校园留守者—采访手记