This article conducts a corpus-based critical discourse analysis on the keywords and their translations of the Macao gaming discourse, with the aim to explore the impact of translation on the construction of the gaming discourse in Macao and (the) development of the gaming industry in the first decade following the sovereignty handover in December 1999. The corpus is consisted of publications from 2000 to 2011 of three sectors in Macao: the local government, the academia and the media. The study finds diachronic changes as well as synchronic changes in the distribution and the translation of the keywords in the corpus. It argues that the changes of terminology being used, such as from ‘gambling’ to ‘gaming’, reflect the purpose of framing and building a healthier gaming industry; it also argues that in such discursive processtranslation plays a crucial role.