Kwok-Kan Gloria Lee Power and the Translator: Joseph Conrad in Chinese Translations during the Republican Era (1912-1937) Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy from University College London Comparative Literature Centre for Intercultural Studies 2010 1 Declaration I, Kwok-Kan Gloria Lee, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 2 Abstract When he died in 1924, Joseph Conrad, who was named a ‘racist’ by Chinua Achebe (1977) and defended by others as taking an anti-imperialist stance (Brantlinger 1996), was a total stranger to the Chinese readers, whose country was made a semi-colony in the late nineteenth century. In the 1930s, however, four of his works were translated and published within four years, all commissioned by the Committee on Editing and Translation funded by the China Foundation for the Promotion of Education and Culture. The thesis investigates the Chinese translations of Conrad’s works published during the Republican Era in 1912-1937, exploring the power relations between the translators as agents and the social structure in which they operated. The thesis is divided into six chapters. After the introduction, I describe, in Chapter 2, the translators’ practice in terms of their narrating positions on the textual and paratextual levels as reflected in the translations of the sea stories borrowing analytical models on narrative discourse devised by Gérard Genette and Roger Fowler. I proceed in Chapter 3 with an account of the commissioner, tracking down the organization of the China Foundation and the Committee on Editing and Translation which initiated the project of translating World Classics (including Conrad’s works) in the 1930s. In Chapter 4, I reassess the notion of ‘faithfulness’, a key concept in the discourse of translation in theory and criticism at the time. Using Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice as the theoretical framework, I argue that the practice of the translators, who created the image of Conrad through their translations, can be explained with reference to their relations with other agents (commissioners, theorists, critics, etc.) occupying different positions within the intellectual field, and the habitus which mediated their position and the social structure they were engaged in Chapter 5, followed by the conclusion. 3 Acknowledgements It is another adventurous voyage coming to an end, ten years after the last one concluded in August 1999. This thesis would not have come into being without the guidance of my supervisor Professor Theo Hermans. I am most grateful to his patience and confidence in me even when I did not believe it myself. I am also indebted to Professor Michel Hockx from SOAS for his patience and invaluable advice on the literary field in modern China. I would like to thank the Graduate School and the Department of Dutch, UCL, for the funding to procure documents on the China Foundation from the Library of Congress, Washington D.C., USA. My thanks also go to Dr. Boika Sokolova, Dr. Y.Y. Chong, Prof. N.F. Chang, Phrae, Dorothea, Daniela, Kathy, Sherlon, Jasmine, Kenneth, Elaine and Geraldine for their help and encouragement; to my family for their unfailing support. Professor S.K. Wong, my beloved teacher, passed away on 8 November 2007. To him I owe my deepest gratitude. 4 Table of Contents Page no. Declaration 2 Abstract 3 Acknowledgements 4 Table of Contents 5 Chapter One: Introduction 9 - Translators as Agents 12 - Scope and Structure 15 - The Translator’s Practice 16 - The Translator’s Habitus 17 - The Translator’s Power 20 Chapter Two: The Translator in the Text 22 I. The Translator in the Text 23 - Roger Fowler’s Notion of Point of View 29 II. Points of View in the Translated Narratives 35 - The Ideological Point of View 35 - Conflicting World-views 47 - The Perceptual Point of View 54 - The Narrators in the Chinese Versions 70 III. The Unreliable Narrator 77 5 IV. The Translator’s Authentic Voice 84 V. Conclusion 94 Notes on Chapter Two 97 Chapter Three: The Translator in the Institutions 101 I. The Institution 103 - Origins and Organization 106 - The Personnel and Positioning 107 - The Programmes 116 II. The Translation Projects 122 - The Committee on Editing and Translation 123 - The Translation of World Literature 126 III. The Translators as Specialists 132 - Joseph Conrad in Republican China 133 - The Translators 137 - Chinese Translations of Conrad’s Works 139 - Representing Conrad 151 IV. Conclusion 154 Notes on Chapter Three 156 Chapter Four: Discourse of Translation in Republican China 162 I. The Historical Background 164 - Translation Theories 169 - Translation Criticisms 171 II. Faithulness – Translation Theories in Republican China 175 - Zhiyi [straight/direct translation] and yiyi [sense translation] 178 6 - Xingsi, yisi and shensi: Translation as Imitation of Form, Style and 187 Spirit III. The ‘Original’ and Meaning as Reflected in Translation Criticism 194 - Positive Translation Reviews 195 - Misinterpretation 199 - Mis/representation – Two Cases 207 - Chinese Translations of Rabindranath Tagore’s Works 211 1922-1924 - Relay Translation 216 IV. The Power to Represent – Revisiting the Concept of Faithfulness 224 V. Conclusion 231 Notes on Chapter Four 233 Chapter Five: The Translator in the Social Space 236 I. Introduction 238 II. The Theory of Practice 245 III. The Social Structure and the Political Field 249 - The Socio-political Situation in China (1912-1937) 251 - The Political Field as the Field of Power 253 - The Political Field and the Social Classes 257 IV. The Intellectual Field 262 - The Publishers 265 - The Writers 268 - The Structure of the Intellectual Field 271 V. Conrad in China – Practice and Power of the Translators 276 - Habitus and Practice 277 7 - The Logic of Practice 280 - Conrad in China 283 - Power and the Translator 286 VI. Conclusion 289 Notes on Chapter Five 290 Chapter Six: Conclusion 291 I. Describing Translation Practice 291 - Applicability of Roger Fowler’s Notion of Point of View 292 - The Implied Author as Constructed by the Translator 296 II. Reconstructing the Habitus 297 - The Institutions 298 - The Discourse 299 III. Shaping the Logic of Translation Practice 301 IV. Perspectives 303 Appendix 1: Chinese Translations of Joseph Conrad’s Works 1912-1937 305 Appendix 2: List of Publications as recorded in the Reports 308 Appendix 3: Articles on Translation Criticism 312 Bibliography 325 8 Chapter One: Introduction Early twentieth-century China played host to a rich tapestry of cultural activities which included the importation of a substantial number of works of fiction through translation. This movement to introduce the Chinese population to foreign literature started in the late Qing period. According to David Pollard, ‘Xinxi xiantan’ [A Garrulous Story], the first complete translation of a foreign novel was serialized from January 1873 to January 1875 in the Chinese literary magazine Yinghuan suoji [Scraps from Land and Sea] (Pollard 1998:6). Translations were not particularly well-received until the genre of new fiction was propagated by reformists such as Liang Qichao and successful works such as Lin Shu’s Chahua nü (La Dame aux Camélias) began to draw the attention of Chinese readers. A statistical survey carried out by Teruo Tarumoto shows that the 1,488 translated works of fiction published in book form or serialized in literary journals in the 1912-1920 period represented a significant increase on the 1,016 titles released between 1840 and 1911 (about 900 of which came in the 1903-1911 period). The sheer number of new translated works published in the later period is impressive, as is the wide range of authors represented including Arthur Conan Doyle, Nick Carter, Henry Rider Haggard, Washington Irving, Charles Dickens, Alexandre Dumas père, Jules Verne, Victor Hugo, Maurice Leblanc, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Oshikawa Shunrou, Shiba Shirou and Kuroiwa Ruikou, to name but a few (Tarumoto 1998:40). Chinese translations of foreign literary works in modern China have long been a focus of scholars. Research on the introduction and representation of foreign writers in China can mostly be categorized into two types. The first type – quantitative reports on published translations – is best exemplified by Xie Tianzhen and Zha Mingjian’s Zhongguo ershi shiji 9 weiguo wenxue fanyishi [A History of Twentieth-century Foreign Literary Translations in China] (2007). The researchers provide what resembles a database as they give a detailed overview of the introduction of authors from the former Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and other European countries, in addition to those from the U.S., Canada, Latin American countries, Australia, Japan, India, and other Asian and African countries since 1898, providing information such as the years and journals in which Chinese translations of their works were published, the publishers involved, and the possible initiatives behind the translation projects carried out, as well as describing how the translations were received by critics. In two of their 24 chapters, Xie and Zha assess the achievements of celebrated translators: Liang Qichao, Yan Fu, Lin Shu, Lu Xun, Zhou Zuoren, Mao Dun, Guo Moruo and Zheng Zhenduo. They also devote a chapter to outlining the contributions of literary groups, literary journals and publishers to the introduction of foreign literature to modern China. Such informative studies offer both a general picture of translation activities in different historical periods and resources that provide a basis for further examination of individual cases. In the second type of research, scholars adopt a qualitative approach by focusing on literary texts or individual authors. This type of research can be launched on a textual level through a comparison of the original with the translation or among different Chinese versions of the same source text. The investigators examine translated texts to explore how the originals have been interpreted in China.