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ABSTRACT
Governments not only develop translation policies in the ‘strict domain of public and political affairs’, but also ‘implement legal rules for the importation and export of all sorts of cultural products’. This study, which looks at the book translation of the China Foreign Languages Bureau, is an exploration of the latter kind. FLB is China’s state agency of international communication established in 1949. In over seventy years, it has published translations in book form in different languages for export, with topics ranging from politics to economics, from literature to art and even natural sciences. This article makes use of González Núñez’s model of translation policy in tracing the diachronic transformation of FLB’s book translation policy as found in its translation management and translation beliefs in its first 50 years. Then, a bibliometric analysis of the actual translation practice is conducted, with a view to explicating the distribution of text types and topics over the years and its relatedness to the management and beliefs. As a study in institutional translation, this article also aims to shed light on the institutional forces that shape the production of translation.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 FLB is the shortened name after 1963, the full name, in literal translation, being Foreign Languages Publishing and Distribution Administration. Before its enlargement in 1963, it was known as International Press Bureau (1949–1952) and Foreign Languages Press (1952–1963). Today, it’s official English designation is China Foreign Languages Publishing Administration, or China International Publishing Group (‘CIPG’).
2 All translations of the documents are ours. In this article, unless otherwise specified, ‘propagate’ is used in its neutral sense.
3 There’s evidence of China competing with the Soviet Union for market in the domain of international communication. For example, it is noted in the work summary for 1952 that China offered discount to local bookstores to boost the circulation of its publications, but ‘the reduced price should be no higher than that of the Soviet Union’ (Zhou & Qi, Citation1999a, p. 66).
4 Israel Epstein was born in Poland in 1915. As a CPC member and an employee at FLB, he dedicated over 50 years of his life to its cause as a journalist and writer.
5 Another literary publication is the English periodical Chinese Literature launched in 1952. Zheng’s (Citation2012) thesis offers a valuable historical account of it.
6 Modern revisionism is one of the charges Mao and the CPC leveled at the Soviet Union through the 1960s. The former saw the Soviet policy of national de-Stalinization and peaceful coexistence with the Western world as betrayal of orthodox Marxist–Leninist principles.
7 The FLB reform plan in 1979 prioritized English, French, Japanese, Spanish, German and Arabic as the target languages of book publication (Zhou & Qi, Citation1999a, p. 483).
8 The 1970 NGB is an exception.
9 The Great Leap Forward is an economic and social push that aimed to rapidly transform China from an agrarian economy into a modern industrial society.
10 The topics are identified based on the categorization of each entry in the NGB of a certain year. Works on the topic of ‘Maoism’, i.e., works authored by Mao Zedong, are retrieved from the following categories: ‘Marxism, Leninism and Works of Mao Zedong’ (1949–1950, 1952–1954), ‘Works and Biographies of Mao Zedong’ (1955–1958), ‘Documents of CPC Central Committee and Works of Mao Zedong’ (1959–1965), ‘Marxism, Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought’ (1966–1971, 1979–1980, 1982, 1998), ‘Works of Mao Zedong’ (1972), ‘Works of Chairman Mao’ (1973–1974), ‘Works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Chairman Mao’ (1975), and ‘Works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao Zedong’ (1976–1978). Works on ‘politics’ are from: ‘Societal Science and Political Science’ (1949–1959), ‘Documents of CPC Central Committee and Works of Mao Zedong’ (1959–1965), ‘Communist Movement, Party and Party Building’ (1960–1965), ‘Politics and Social Life’ (1960–1965), ‘Documents of Communist Party and Labor Party Worldwide and Works of their Leaders’ (1963–1965), ‘Politics’ (1966–1977), and ‘Politics and Law’ (1978–1999). Works on ‘economy’ are from: ‘Economics, Political Economics and Economic Policy’ (1950–1951, 1953–1959) and ‘Economy’ (1960–1961, 1964–1967, 1969–1970, 1972, 1974–1978, 1980–1992, 1994–1997, 1999). Works on the topic of ‘art’, which covers not only books on the different forms of art such as painting, sculpture, and theatre, but also picture books for children, Chinese comic books, and picture album, are retrieved from: ‘Art’ (1952–1999), ‘Literature and Art’ (1970), and ‘Literature’ (1988–1993). Works on ‘literature’ are from: ‘Literature’ (1951, 1953–1999) and ‘Literature and Art’ (1970). Works on ‘history & geography’ are from: ‘Geography and Economic Geography’ (1956, 1958–1959), ‘History’ (1958–1960, 1962–1965) and ‘History and Geography’ (1966–1967, 1972–1997, 1999).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Jianfeng Jiang
Jianfeng Jiang is a lecturer in English at the School of International Communications & Education, Communication University of Zhejiang, and a PhD candidate in Translation Studies at Beijing Foreign Studies University. His research interests include institutional translation, translation policy and Chinese literature in translation.
Huijuan Ma
Huijuan Ma is a professor in Translation Studies at the School of English and International Studies, Beijing Foreign Studies University. Her areas of research are translation history, translation teaching and literary translation.