Ideology, Power And Translation A Critical Analysis Of The English Translation Of The Selected Works Of Mao Tse-tung

Mao Zedong exerted great influence not only on China, but on the world as well. This had to do with the massive publication of his works and wide publicity of his theories. The most influential of his speeches and articles are included in the official edition of the Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung (hereafter referred to as the Selected Works).Research into Mao Zedong and his works is abundant, but study on the translation of his works is scarce. Existing materials and research carried out are mainly factual accounts with little theoretical analysis. They describe what has happened, but the question of "why" is left unanswered. This dissertation not only discusses the translation event and translation products, but also explores the relationship between various textual variables and extratextual variables, hence to disclose the ideology and power relations that underlay the translations.Starting from the1920s, some of Mao Zedong’s works began to be translated into foreign languages and published in the organizational periodical of the Communist International-the Comintern. During the period of the War against Japanese Aggression, a specialized publicity group was established under the South China Bureau headed by Zhou Enlai and other Communist leaders, which was entrusted with the task of translating Mao Zedong’s works and disseminating them to foreign countries. In the early1950s, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) established a specialized committee for the compilation of the Selected Works. Mao Zedong participated in and supervised the compilation. At the same time, a specialized committee was formed by the Central Committee for the translation of the Selected Works.Like the compilation of the Selected Works, the translation was an important political task. Participating translators were carefully selected, most of whom had foreign experience. They were transferred from their work units to translate the Selected Works. The Party financed and backed them, and they worked with utter devotion. The translation was conducted collectively, with several people working in a group. The English translation of the Selected Works was carried out virtually concurrently with the Chinese compilation. With the Chinese source text being under frequent editing, the English translation involved much extra effort on the part of the translators. This English version of the Selected Works collectively translated by Chinese scholars was not published in China, instead, it was published in London and New York in1954. Later in the early1960s, another round of officially organized translation of the Selected Works was conducted. This time, there were foreign experts involved in the work for final editing and polishing. This English translation was based on the1954English version and was published successively in the early1960s by the Foreign Languages Press (FLP) in Beijing.The publication of the Selected Works, home and abroad, was also officially arranged by the Central Committee of the CPC, China’s supreme political organ, through its subordinate departments. There was massive publication of both the Chinese original and translations in various languages. To guarantee the dissemination of "Mao Zedong Thought", many copies of the translated Selected Works were given out as gifts by the Chinese government to people from foreign countries.There are so many editions/versions of Mao Zedong’s Selected Works in Chinese that it is difficult to give an exact account of the relationship between them. For convenience, this dissertation differentiates these different editions/versions into three categories, namely, official editions/versions, semi-official editions/versions and non-official editions/versions. Official editions/versions, in the strict sense, refer to the four volumes of the Selected Works compiled with the personal participation and supervision of Mao Zedong that were published in succession from the early1950s to1960by the People’s Publishing House and the same four volumes published in1991by the same publisher; semi-official editions refer to those published by various organizations under the Party in the1940s; and non-official editions refer to those compiled and published by individuals or groups, for instance, by different factions of the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution. Official editions of the Selected Works had undergone strict selection and heavy political editing.For the English translation of the Selected Works, there is the Lawrence&Wishart (LW) version published in1954and the version published by the FLP in Beijing in the early1960s. In April,1977, Vol. V of the Selected Works was published by the People’s Publishing House; later in September in the same year, an English translation of Vol. V was published by FLP. Though theoretically Vol. V was meant to be a natural continuation of the first four volumes of the official version of the Selected Works, it differs from the other four volumes in that the compilation and translation were both carried out after the death of the Chairman. For political reasons, Vol. V was rather short lived:only five years after its initial publication, China’s National Publication Bureau issued a notice on the suspension of its distribution. Therefore, the textual description and a critical analysis of this research mainly focuses on the first four volumes of the Selected Works. English translations of some of the articles included in the Selected Works from western sources are also discussed.The two officially carried out English translations demonstrate characteristics of translational compliance, in terms of both textual features and paratext arrangement. The1954LW English version of the Selected Works features a translation strategy of almost extreme literal rendition. This is reflected not only in the choice of words and expressions and the retention of the names and images in the source text, but also in the retention of the original sentence order. It was probably because of the almost extreme literal rendition that the version was not very warmly received. The FLP version was largely a revision of the LW version. It is less literal than the LW version; nevertheless, literal rendering remains the dominant strategy in the translation, especially where names and images are concerned. What led to the strategy of an almost extreme rendering of the LW version? How are different ideological orientations reflected in the translation? To the first question, this research contextualizes the translation event in its social-cultural and political context and explores the impact of power and ideology on the translation. To the second question, a comparative study is made between the official English versions of the Selected Works and an English version from a Western source. Research findings are: 1) In the early1950s in China when the English translation of the Selected Works was conducted, almost everything was politicized and several campaigns were launched for ideological remolding. Deviation, conscious or unconscious, from the correct line set by the authorities would involve serious ideological implications and consequently would often lead to a heavy penalty. In such a context, the interpersonal relationship between the translators and the patron became equally important as, if not more important than, the intertextual relationship between the source text and the translated text. To keep themselves from trouble, the intimidated translators inevitably chose to translate in a "safe" way:they translate in a way that was desirable to the patron, in this case, also the supreme leader and the author of the source text, rather than in a way that would have enabled the translation to best convey the sense in the source text. Moreover, because the translation was virtually carried out concurrently with the Chinese compilation and the translators were working under an extremely tight schedule, cases of inaccurate interpretation of the source text occurred. In short, abundant examples show that the impact of power and ideology on the English translation of the Selected Works was huge. This verifies the notions put forward by Lefevere (2004a) that "Translation has to do with authority and legitimacy and, ultimately with power"(p.2) and "Patrons circumscribe the translators’ideological space"(p.8).2). An analysis based on a comparative study of passages from the official English versions of the Selected Works and a Western source demonstrate the impact of ideological orientations on translation. Different ideological orientations have led to drastically different translations, with the two official English versions accurately conveying the message from the source-text author and the translation from a Western source featuring message distortion.This research is carried out under the guidance of the theories of critical discourse analysis (CDA) and descriptive translation studies (DTS). Along with the development of DTS and CDA, scholars in translation studies have increasingly taken into consideration such extratextual factors as ideology and power relations in their studies of translations. More and more translation scholars have come to believe that translation is a product of complex interactions between socio-cultural and political contexts at the global level, situational factors at the intermediate level and cognitive conditions of participating translators at the local level.Adopting the causal model proposed by Chesterman (2006) and Williams and Chesterman (2002), the paper contextualizes the compilation, translation and publication of the Selected Works, discusses the relationship between various textual variables and extratextual variables, and explores the impact of power and ideology on translation.Methodologically this research adopts a combination of a top-down approach and a bottom-up approach. First it discusses conditions of the translation event at the intermediate level:the skopos, the patronage, the selection of translators, the way the translation was carried out and the translation strategies adopted. Then it delineates the various versions both of the source text and the translated text. Next comes the textual description, which is followed by a critical analysis of the translation. This dissertation concludes with a discussion on the impact of the translation event, the implication of this research and ideas of potential future research.