Document Type
Journal Article
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
APA Citation
Tan, Z. (2017). Censorship in Translation: The Dynamics of Non-, Partial and Full Translations in the Chinese Context. Meta, 62 (1), 45-68. https://doi.org/10.7202/1040466ar