Propaganda is a derogatory term? If you want to say that government propaganda can use this word? Which word should I use?

Noun (abbreviation of noun) propaganda; Missionary Association.

Propaganda is an exotic product, which is a derogatory term in English. Explanation: By deception, cover-up, etc. The loyalty of the group to an ideology has been promoted in a large range. In democratic countries, there is no propaganda department, because it is the people who ask the government to do something, not the government who asks the people to do something. . It is an international joke that the nationals of no democratic country in the world want to learn from their speech spirit or focus on what.

This word is used, but it is basically a derogatory term in English.

The discussion is as follows:

"Zhang Yang" is a very popular word in China. In order to let people all over the world know about the rapid development of China, the Party and the government attach great importance to external publicity. Party organizations at all levels have propaganda departments, which are responsible for conveying the policies of the party and the state. Enterprises also have their own publicity departments, which are responsible for promoting their products. Even in every class of the school, there are publicity committees. So much "propaganda", how to translate it?

Our most familiar English counterpart is "propagation", but because many people have pointed out the derogatory meaning of this word, in recent years, there have been many different translations in Chinese-English translation, in order to avoid using the word "propagation" as much as possible. However, we found that in the translation provided by Xinhua News Agency, "China Central Propaganda Department" was still translated as "Propaganda Department of the CPC Central Committee". By analogy, the propaganda departments of other party committees at all levels can also be translated as "Party Committee Propaganda Department". It is worth noting that in the same webpage, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China International Publicity Office translated it as "the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China International Communication Office". Professor Zhang Jian, who has been engaged in news translation research for a long time, advocates translating the word "translation for international communication" into "translation for international communication". It can be seen that the translation of the above publicity office coincides with this.

However, Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China has been translated into the Propaganda Department of the CPC Central Committee in the New Age Chinese-English Dictionary edited by Wu and Cheng Zhenqiu (the first edition of the Commercial Press in 2000). Xu Meijiang, a teacher of the Central Compilation Bureau, found that the word "Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China" had been translated into "publicity" when consulting the Chinese-English General Vocabulary for Foreign Affairs compiled by the State Council Press Office, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Languages Bureau, Xinhua News Agency, China Daily and Central Compilation Bureau, and excitedly pointed out that "this is the concrete result of emancipating the mind and being determined to innovate."

On this issue, we can also test the acceptability of translation through retrieval in the network age. By searching the pages of China Daily, the author found that 793 pages contained "Propaganda Department", but only 24 pages contained "Promotion Department". This is enough to show the tendency of translation circles in China on this issue at present. However, we still want to clarify a problem. What do British and American newspapers think of these words? I searched for "Propaganda Department" on The New York Times website, and only got two results, both of which were reports about China. As for the "propaganda department", there is no result at all. Judging from the prejudice against China's propaganda organizations in the west, in their eyes, China's propaganda department should be called "Propaganda Department". Recently, however, the US government seems to pay special attention to the role of propaganda, so it has put forward a plan to establish an anti-Taliban propaganda group. Please look at the following sentences:

Senior officials said that they thought the anti-coup mission was crucial to the war.

Similarly, in The New York Times's webpage, you can find a special topic by searching for propaganda, all of which are articles about political propaganda. The views of American media on propaganda are generally negative. In some neutral sense, the word propaganda is more common. For example, in the recent balloon boy incident, the relevant media reports used the phrase publicity stunt:

People who tend to believe that Thursday's balloon drama is a publicity stunt will want to see the original video of Richard Sheehan explaining his "experiment" to reporters on Thursday night.

Wikipedia's explanation of "publicity stunt" is as follows:

Publicity stunt is a planned activity, which aims to attract the public's attention to the organizer or his cause. The publicity stunt can be organized by professionals or produced by amateurs. Advertisers, celebrities, athletes and politicians often take advantage of these events.

Therefore, for the sake of propaganda, it is best not to use propaganda in the translation of the word "propaganda department".

As for the translation of foreign publicity into international communication, it is also more appropriate. The concept of Chinese propaganda corresponds to many words in English, including political propaganda, some corresponding to English propaganda or hype, and some corresponding to English propaganda. As for commercial publicity, besides publicity, it can also be promotion, advertising and so on.

The publicity activities we are talking about can generally be translated into English publicity campaign or advertising campaign. As for the public relations propaganda department of a company, it seems unnecessary to translate the word publicity directly, but it should be translated according to its specific actions, not necessarily into the public relations propaganda department of XXX company. There is also the so-called bulletin board, which is billboard or announcement board in English. Popular science bulletin boards are generally translated into popular science billboards or billboards for popular science or driving columns. Finally, the propaganda Committee members in the school class should be called the canteen (or students) to be responsible for propaganda.