Literary translation and soft power: African literature in Chinese translation

ABSTRACT

In the context of competing and conflicting discourses about the intensification of relations between China and Africa in the 21^st century, this article explores the potential for gaining insight into China–Africa relations through a study of literary translation activities. The article presents the results of a survey of African literature translated into Chinese between 2000 and 2015 and argues that the majority of the translations can be linked with commercial motivations. However, the article also identifies a number of exceptions to this pattern and investigates these on a case by case basis, taking into account the political connections of the authors and drawing on interviews with the Chinese publishing houses. The article argues that literary translation can be connected with the cultivation of good political relations at the highest levels, as well as with the promotion of Sino-African friendship and of a positive view of China. The article asks whether such translation projects can be, or should be, classified as tools of ‘soft power’, and reflects more generally on the usefulness of the soft power concept for translation studies.

KEYWORDS:

• African literature
• China-Africa relations
• Chinese
• diplomacy
• translation
• soft power

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) under Grant AH/L007150/1. The author would particularly like to acknowledge the contribution of Sarah Fang Tang who carried out the survey of African literature in China and conducted the interviews with Chinese publishers as part of her work as a research assistant on the project.

Data Availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, KB, upon reasonable request.

Disclosure Statement

There are no conflicts of interest to report.

Notes

1. The plans also cover social development cooperation and security cooperation. English versions of the plans can be viewed on the FOCAC website (www.focac.org/eng/).

2. For an overview of the history of Chinese adoption of the term, see Li and Roenning (2013). On the extent to which the term has penetrated Chinese academic and policymaking, see Breslin (2011).

3. See, for example, Jacquemond (1992), Venuti (1995), Lambert (1995) and Casanova (2007).

4. The prizes that are cited here and in the following paragraph are intended to serve as an indicator of the author’s success on an international level, rather than to posit a direct link between the award of the particular prize in question and the decision to publish their work in Chinese translation.

5. This and all subsequent quotations from interviews were translated from Chinese into English by Sarah Fang Tang.

6. The representative from this publishing house explained that Alaa Al Aswany’s The Yacoubian Building was selected on the basis of its potential to serve as a learning resource about the history of Egypt.

7. According to the site Babelio, Djombo is author of more than ten novels, but I have not been able to find bibliographic records for all of these. https://www.babelio.com/auteur/Henri-Djombo/309733.

8. Congolese activist Mingwa Biango (2010) also claims that Djombo is a shareholder in Sicofor, but it is not clear whether this information is taken from the same (undocumented) source as Michel and Beuret’s claim, or whether it can serve as independent corroboration of their account.

9. We should note that European companies involved in the timber trade have also been subject to criticism (see, for example, Cannon 2016; Rowe 2013; World Wildlife Fund 2005).

10. The Chinese version was translated from the Arabic by Professor Rongjian Li, an expert in Arabic language and culture.

11.  Chorin’s (2015) summary of Bukheit’s output indicates that his stories were published in magazines rather than as books, although the Douban website’s introduction to the Chinese translation states that the collection of stories that corresponds to the Chinese version was published in Arabic in 1996.

12.  Gardens of the Night won the Beirut Book Fair prize in 1991 (Chorin 2015).

13. These include Quartet, Paul Kegan International, and DARF. For more information on Fagih, see Chorin (2015).

14. For an overview of publishing structures in China, see Sun, Yang, and Mao (2009).

15. For more information on the formation of the African Union and the role played by Gadaffi, see Bedjaoui (2012) or Maluwa (2012). We should also note, however, that the way in which cooperation between China and the African Union has played out has been complex and contradictory: Ikome (2010, 208) reports, for example, that ‘the FOCAC meeting in Beijing in 2006 registered deliberate and conscious efforts by both some African states and China to sideline the African Union during the meeting’, and suggests that this ‘clearly revealed the tensions between the rhetoric of multilateralism and the practical disposition to bilaterialism in Africa’s engagement with China’.

16. It is possible that the works by Gadaffi and Bukheit formed part of the cultural cooperation agreement signed in 2001, but I have not been able to obtain a copy of this document.

17. The interview appears in a YouTube video posted by China’s Forbidden News. The video was made in October 2011 to counter the Chinese Communist Party’s assertion that it had never been friends with Gadaffi. See China’s Forbidden News (2011). The quotation is taken from the English subtitles.

18. For an example of how the Africa Joint Pavilion is held up as an example of China’s respect for Africa, see Zhang (2010).

19. While Breslin (2011) disputes the understanding that soft power is ‘something that needs to be actively promoted’ (7), preferring instead to understand it as ‘the latent power of attraction’ (8), I would argue that Nye’s conceptualisation of soft power does allow for the deliberate, conscious creation of resources which have the potential to become soft power resources. For example, in his discussion of the soft power of the Soviet Union, Nye (2004, 74) points to the large sums spent by the USSR on ballet companies and symphony orchestras as well as its investments in sport.

20. Indices of soft power are usually calculated for individual nations, rather than for continents. However, in my view, there is a case for exploring the soft power of larger groupings, particularly where these are commonly treated as distinct entities by the media. ‘Africa’ represents one such case in point, as does ‘Europe’, particularly from the perspective of current UK politics.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the AHRC [AH/L007150/1].

Notes on contributors

Kathryn Batchelor

Kathryn Batchelor is Professor of Translation Studies at UCL, UK. She is the author of Decolonizing Translation: Francophone African Novels in English Translation (2009) and Translation and Paratexts (2018). Her other publications include four co-edited volumes of essays: Translating Thought/Traduire la pensée (2010), Intimate Enemies: Translation in Francophone Contexts (2013), Translating Frantz Fanon across Continents and Languages (2017) and China-Africa Relations: Building Images through Cultural Cooperation. Media Representation and Communication (2017).