Exporting Chinese Literature: “Self-sufficiency” Slipping
By Bruce Humes, published December 17, 2009, 11:41p.m.
A recent article in the The People's Daily (overseas edition) poses the question: Now that most older masters of Chinese-to-English literary translation such as Yang Xianyi have gone to heaven, who shall carry the baton forward?
This informative article (in Chinese) is chock-full of factoids (all 2008 figures): China’s overall translation market generated more than RMB300m last year; the country hosts more than 3,000 translation firms; the percentage of China’s publication/book copyright imports to exports was 6:1; there are reportedly less than 100 qualified Chinese-to-English literary translators in China today (nationality not specified); and 260 Chinese scholars have researched and written theses on the topic of translation studies.
The article laments the fact that there are, alas, no home-grown successors to Yang Xianyi et al on the horizon. In other words, China’s “self-sufficiency” (自力更生) in this crucial area is badly lacking.
The idea that non-Chinese translators, either those currently living in the PRC or abroad, could play a key role in conjunction with their counterparts in China, is pooh-poohed. This argument is documented with colorful quotes that point out how many foreign literary translation wannabes are [sadly] limited by their Western modes of thought, and their translations riddled with errors.
The article ends with a call to learn from the Japanese, whose literary classics have been widely translated and marketed worldwide. No mention whatsoever is made of the seminal role played by various programs and financial grants (sponsored by the Japanese government and publishers) that have encouraged foreign translators to render Japanese literary works in Western languages.
Comments
For what it's worth, if you read the whole thing the writer seems to be referring primarily to the translation and dissemination of traditional Chinese literature, in which case it makes a little more sense to claim that translation would require an understanding of Chinese culture that you would have a hard time getting outside of China. I think that's part of the reason why so many academic translations of classical Chinese literature read poorly – it's rare to get a translator with both the academic grounding and literary ability.
Sadly the same argument is often applied to contemporary Chinese literature, which is significantly sillier: there's nothing extraordinarily difficult about most contemporary Chinese fiction, and in most cases a thorough grounding in Western literature (and a quick course in recent Chinese history) would be the best preparation for a translator. The argument that foreigners can never truly understand Chinese culture seems to be mostly a band-aid for the embarrassing fact that most foreigners don't really care.
At any rate, the solution still is not (and will never be) training up armies of Chinese translators, even if they do all pass their Level 10 English exams.
While I agree that many academic translations of classical Chinese literature read poorly because translators with both academic grounding and literary ability are rare, I don't see how the situation will improve with native-speakers of Chinese doing all the translating. Aren't translators with literary ability out of their native languages even rarer?
The argument that foreigners can never truly understand China isn't just a band-aid, it's an ideological myth that actually cuts against the argument about translation: if we can't understand Chinese culture, would we understand the translations?
Lucas
The reason I posted this item is simply to show the closed-door thinking (闭门造车)that still pervades in some circles in China.
It is widely agreed among translation specialists and publishers globally that when it comes to literary translation, with the rare exception, the translator should be translating into his or her mother tongue. Popular opinion in China, however, does not accept this view.
More significantly, the posted item harks back to attitudes prevalent during the 1950-1980 period, when all art in socialist China -- including literature and perhaps even translated literature -- existed to serve the ends of the revolution. Literature, be it for domestic or external consumption, was subject to the needs of the command economy. The ultimate concern then was not readability in the target text; the overriding concern was that the translated text (its content and treatment) convey the correct sentiments and world view.
The natural conclusion was: the PRC-born and educated translator was a more reliable channel for the creation of such a translated literary work. Today, the conclusion is the same, but the reasoning seems to be that foreigners just don't "get" Chinese culture.
Chinese Books, English Reviews
Hi, Bruce--
I was clear that you were describing, and not endorsing, a Chinese closed-door thinking. But what interests me is that it closes on its own argument. Of all places, wouldn't you think that translation would be the place for open-door thinking to flourish?
That said, the in-house translations of Mao's sayings aren't that bad. They formalize his often colloquial diction, but they've got a rhetorical force nonetheless. And I know this is not the time to say this, but I find them more compelling than most of the Yang Xianyi I've read.
Lucas
Cultural chauvinism aside, I see this as the real problem. It's popular in China to talk about culture in market-economy terms: "cultural goods/products", the cultural "deficit", an imbalance between supply and demand. But beyond the use of these buzzwords, there's often a real lack of understanding that, in a market economy, people buy what they want to buy, and if you want to succeed, you'll have to understand what it is they want, and then give it to them.
90% of this article presupposes that it is the Chinese government's job to supply foreigners with the kind of cultural products that the government thinks they ought to consume. And then, at the very end (and how typical is this of Chinese cultural reporting, to start out strident and get more and more reasonable as it goes), we get this:
"Professor Gu noted that, 'When it comes to exporting Chinese culture, we must make a thorough comparison of Chinese and Western culture, and understand that different readers will require different things of Chinese culture. We cannot expect all books to be best sellers. It's most important to identify target readerships, and then slowly expand our influence.'"
No shit. Anyone who spends twenty minutes thinking about the problem comes to the same conclusion: Chinese culture can only be exported according to the demands of the importers. Another twenty minutes of thought suggests that one might be best off letting the foreigners participate in choosing what they want. And yet, at the Frankfurt Book Fair, we got schizophrenia: The official publishers delegation, with their raft of books about China that no one wanted to read, and then the authors themselves, writing about things that interested foreign readers but embarrassed Chinese officials.
Within China, it is still perfectly commonplace to publish books that everyone knows ahead of time will not find a single reader, and then force various governmental/semi-governmental bodies to buy them (or just warehouse them directly and call it good). It hasn't quite sunk in yet that that won't work outside the national borders. Chinese publishers are still trying to talk foreign publishers into trades: "we'll publish your bestseller in China if you take this crappy book about reform measures in the 1980s and publish it in your country". The answer, predictably, is usually "if we can't sell it then we don't want it". That's still interpreted as stubbornness, not as a cold commercial reality.
The Invisible Hand needs to get in here and smack some heads together.
I'm going to participate in a conference in Hanoi next week, and reading some of the articles and interviews in the Vietnamese press I can see that they think in exactly the same way as the Chinese. For instance, one writer says: "To have Vietnamese literature introduced in the world, Vietnam must become a big country. Once they respect us, they respect our culture and literature." And another suggests that the government should provide the selection, printing and distribution of translated works...
Anna Chen, December 31, 3:58a.m.
Yup, sounds like a typical post-Communist command-economy hangover. Here's another link on the Vietnamese conference, via the Literary Saloon