Document Type

Journal Article

Department/Unit

Department of English Language and Literature

Language

English

Abstract

This research focuses upon how the translation of certain types of literature in China evolved historically: from ‘non-translations’ (i.e., ‘translations’ unmade as well as made and yet strictly forbidden under given censorship conditions) to ‘partial’ or ‘full/near-full’ translations set against the backdrop of changing practices required by the country’s censorship policies. My analysis begins with an overview of the multi-faceted interface between censorship and translation, followed by the conceptualization of a typology of translations under censorship. This initial discussion, in turn, allows me to resituate specific translations, including the once absented translations of earlier times (i.e., prior to the 1949 Revolution or prior to the Cultural Revolution), which were initially taken at face value as ‘non-translations’ and yet which, later on, became ‘partial’ or ‘full/near-full’ translations under the country’s subsequently more relaxed censorial operations. I attempt to illustrate such shifts by means of in-depth discussion of the dynamic nature of translational commitment in connection with the change-resistant properties and evolving priorities of censorship. In illustrating my arguments, I will draw specific examples from case studies of three well-known censorship-affected translations – i.e., On China(Kissinger 2011), Lolita (Nabokov 1991) and The Good Earth (Buck 1960), which, I argue, epitomise the shifting degrees of translational commitment (‘non-,’ ‘partial’ and ‘full/near-full’) as they occurred in the Chinese context.

Keywords

censorship, self-censorship, non-translation, partial translation, full translation, dynamics, Chinese context

Publication Date

4-2017

Source Publication Title

Meta

Volume

62

Issue

1

Start Page

45

End Page

68

Publisher

Les Presses de L'universite de Montreal

Peer Reviewed

1

DOI

10.7202/1040466ar

Link to Publisher's Edition

http://dx.doi.org/10.7202/1040466ar

ISSN (print)

0026-0452

ISSN (electronic)

1492-1421

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