Translation Zones in Modern China: Authoritarian Command Versus G ...

translation in China into Chinese is a separate and very different activity. Many older Chinese writers (Xiao Qian is a famous example⁸) chose to translate foreign-language fiction, poetry, and drama into Chinese after the 1950s, if only to escape the restrictions of writing to fit the requirements of the new regime. In addition, the publication in China of foreign literature in Chinese translation was carried out by a wide range of publishers and did not fall within the jurisdiction of a single body. Already an independent topic with its own research history, the translation of works into Chinese lies outside the scope of this book.⁹ More generally, the translation of English works into the languages of developing countries, including China (all of which are sometimes collectively characterized as postcolonial countries), comes under discussion only in part 3 as a comparable topic in global intercultural studies.¹⁰

Gender differences in status and roles with respect to writers and translators in China are described in chapters 4 and 5 as part of the background story in this book. Both formal and informal translation was carried out largely from texts that were written by men and was undertaken by women under male supervision, whether the women were Chinese or foreign. These roles were neither accidental nor unique to China; the assumption that there is a necessary link between viewing translation as inferior to creative writing and regarding women as inferior to men is well known among translation scholars.¹¹ For this reason, these issues are mentioned but not discussed in detail in the following chapters.

Both kinds of literary translation described in this book took place in an authoritarian society, but it is beyond the scope of this book to give a comprehensive account of how translation operates in an authoritarian and totalitarian society. Translation historians and social scientists might ideally work together to examine the institutional relationship of the translation agency to the state and the changes that occurred in this relationship over time. They may also investigate how this translation agency and the role of translators in the agency differed significantly from other cultural and educational institutions in China during the last half-century. The following is only a preliminary account of authoritarian command translation in China and its challengers in the 1980s.¹²