Word matters

(China Daily)

Translating foreign books was once like walking on egg shells with translators having to work around both 'decadent' sexual content and 'sensitive' issues. The scene is vastly changed now, Mei Jia reports

Liu Feng, editor-in-chief of Yilin Press, the country's leading publisher of translated works, recalls his senior's instructions regarding the translations of sexual descriptions in foreign books. "All descriptions of intimacy between the characters after the kiss, and reference to the human body below the neck, are to be kept out," he was told.

Novels such as Lady Chatterley's Lover and Lolita were, thus, a source of considerable headache to Liu and other editors of foreign literature.

But things are very different in the first decade of the new millennium. A complete version of Lady Chatterley's Lover in Chinese has been available since 2004, and of Lolita since 2006.

Full versions of other heavyweights, such as Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Jack Kerouac's On the Road, and some works by Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun are also now available.

Before the 1990s, foreign literature and books on social sciences could only appear on the mainland with their "sensitive" political, social and historical content exorcized.

It's a much more open environment now.

"There are fewer minefields as society develops and the government gains more confidence," says Tong Baomin, a veteran editor of 34 years at The People's Literature Publishing House. Tong and his colleagues have been involved in the publication of several translations of many significant German literary works.

"Chinese readers now have access to all kinds of books," says Gao Xing, deputy editor-in-chief of World Literature, a bimonthly magazine founded in 1953 which pioneered the introduction of foreign literature.

"Translators and publishers are now doing books whose Chinese versions were once unthinkable," Gao adds, citing Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time and Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, as examples.

Publications of translated books in the 1950s and 60s were almost always confined to those from non-capitalist countries, with the majority coming from the former Soviet Union and East European countries. The political ideology prevalent then saw Western works as decadent and harmful, according to Zhao Wuping, vice-president of the Shanghai Translation Publishing House.

The criteria for choosing foreign works for translation were gradually relaxed with the country's opening-up and reform.

When Yilin magazine, now part of Yilin Press, published Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie in 1979, it caused a big stir, with some scholars complaining that the book failed to meet the mission of "educating the masses".

Things calmed down within a year and 400,000 copies of the book sold like hot cakes in just a few months.

Yilin's former president Li Jingrui discussed the phenomenon in an article: "Luckily, it happened at the start of the reform and opening-up, in a climate that was more open and liberated."

In the 1980s, many Western classics were introduced, Zhao Wuping says. They were classified in different series, one of which was named "Walking Toward the World", in an attempt to capture the nation's eagerness to make up for the losses of seclusion caused by political movements.

Since the 1990s, translated books from a wider range of sources have appeared, including more contemporary and popular ones.

"Now we translate and publish anything except for those threatening State interests," says Tong.

He says he recently abandoned the translation of a Korean novel that gave a false account of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). Instead, he worked on a translation of how Shanghai sheltered Jews during World War II. The book includes a discussion of the military triumph of Chiang Kai-shek in the Northern Expedition War (1926-27), a mention of which, decades ago, would have been strictly forbidden.

Yilin Press' Editor-in-Chief Liu Feng also cites the publication of John Rawls's Political Liberalism in Chinese in 2000 as an example of official open-mindedness.

"Upon its publication, many people complained to the central government about the book's 'ideological inadequacy'. We prepared a written defense. However, the book survived and even became a market success," Liu recalls.

In 1992, China joined the Universal Copyright Convention and the Berne Convention.

"Translated books are now unlikely to be revised by translators or editors arbitrarily," Liu says. But he also argues that there is a case for legitimate revisions in translation to suit the reading habits of the target audience. "There shouldn't be too much fuss with unavoidable changes for better acceptance. I know that this happens with some English translations of books in other languages. Lulu Wang, the Netherlands' best-selling author, loses many segments in the English translation of her books in Dutch, after adjustments to the English readers' reading habits."

The increasing access to information worldwide has also given an impetus to the publishing of translated works.

Ouyang Tao, an editor of translated foreign books with The People's Literature Publishing House, says that with more people traveling abroad, books that might otherwise be overlooked, are getting translated.

Zhao, of the Shanghai Translation Publishing House, credits the Internet with making people more curious about the world, especially since 2000.

"Readers expect swifter action from publishers to introduce important works published abroad," Zhao says. "Besides, many Chinese read foreign works in their original languages. There's no point in hiding anything from readers in translation."

In 2003, Yilin Press took the hint from some informed readers and published Douglas Reeman's Band of Brothers months before its TV adaptation hit the mainland. This is just one of the successes Chinese publishers have had in capitalizing on the global market for popular works.

In 2006, the country's translators achieved a major triumph: They finished the full-text translation of the Mahabharata from Sanskrit. The ancient Indian epic has only one other full-text translation in English.

"It can only be achieved in a time like this," says Huang Yiting, a Sanskrit-literature research assistant with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, "when funding and translators are ready".

Tong, of The People's Literature Publishing House, recalls that when he first set out, typesetting techniques were very primitive. Each page of a book had to be typeset separately. It took months to print a collection of the Russian writer Maxim Gorky.

The technical advancements and the growing ranks of professional translators have both contributed to the appearance of many previously unthinkable foreign works in Chinese, Tong says.

Statistics from the National Library of China show that 107,500 kinds of foreign books were translated and published between 1995 and 2004. Yilin Press alone publishes more than 100 fresh translations on average each year, Liu says.

"Now we're in an unprecedented era of abundance and freedom, and face multiple choices in reading," says Ouyang.

Few translations in the west

While the lack of translated works in the United States has built "a new kind of iron curtain", the increasing number of translated works in China may be "a sign of [China's] growing openness to the rest of the world", says veteran American translator Edith Grossman.

The 74-year-old has turned out some of the finest translation of Spanish literary masterpieces, including Don Quixote in 2003.

In an article in the May/June issue of the American journal Foreign Policy entitled A New Great Wall: why the crisis in translation matters, she calls it a "national embarrassment" that the English-speaking world is reluctant to introduce translated works.

She supports her view with shocking statistics: "In the United States and Britain, only 2 to 3 percent of books published each year are translations, compared with almost 35 percent in Latin America and Western Europe.

"Our stubborn and willful ignorance could have dangerous consequences," she says.

Grossman says translations enable cultural communication among societies. She points out that English serves as a bridge between languages, as many non-English books have to be translated into English first before they get attention in other languages.

"Translators are engaged in an intellectual and creative effort, and the value of what they do should be recognized," Grossman says in an e-mail to China Daily.

Inadequate compensation results in translators rushing through their work and this affects the quality, she says.

"I believe the solution to the problem lies in higher pay for translators and a more reasonable length of time to revise and edit their work," she says.

Quality of work under scrutiny

Last year, a minor storm brewed in the translation world when a history professor of prestigious Tsinghua University mistranslated Chiang Kai-shek as "Chang Kaishen", instead of his Chinese name "Jiang Jieshi", while compiling a historical monograph on Chinese-Russian border research.

Readers were indignant. Such reactions are becoming frequent as more translated works are published. Thanks to growing access to the Internet, readers are quick to post blunders, juxtaposing the Chinese versions against the original texts.

The quality of translation is put in the spotlight. Some bitterly accuse translators of being poorly qualified and lacking dedication, and hark back to the good old days of master translators, such as Fu Lei, Xiao Qian and Yang Xianyi.

These were people praised for both their insight into Eastern and Western cultures, as well as their meticulous translations.

Today's translators comprise mainly college teachers, researchers, freelance and part-time translators, says Zhao Wuping, vice-president of the Shanghai Translation Publishing House.

Zhao believes the problem of poor translations is not new but appears so because the number of translated books is increasing and the platform for criticism has become more accessible.

"There were bad translations in the 1980s (too). At any time, there are good translations as well as bad ones," he says.

Ouyang Tao, an editor of translated books with The People's Literature Publishing House, points out that there are many young prominent talents, with "amazing fluency in the foreign languages and the mother tongue".

He says with publishing houses becoming more professional since 2004, "we are faced with a wider range of products".

However, Tong Baomin from the same publishing house feels that the reforms have fallen short. He says few translators are willing to devote years to a single book these days. "To survive in the competitive market, publishers push translators to finish their work quickly.

"How can you ensure quality if translators are rushing to meet a deadline?" Tong asks.

He says the market orientation of the publishing industry has forced publishers to strike a balance between satisfying the market's needs and maintaining an acceptable standard.

Both Ouyang and Tong believe that the government should support books of value that may have limited market potential and require a longer time for translation.

Gao Xing with World Literature magazine also says translators deserve more respect.

"Translation is an art, it's like dancing in shackles. But translators are insufficiently paid, getting a maximum of only 60 yuan ($8.8) for 1,000 Chinese words," Gao says, adding that many translators of literature and social sciences - mainly lecturers and researchers - have little to gain from their translation work at the time of performance appraisal for promotions.

"People who are good at translation prefer to write their own books, which earn greater recognition at the time of their evaluation," he says. "Only the ones with great zeal persist with translations."