Censura y traducción en la China contemporánealos paratextos de traducciones chinas de 1984 de George Orwell

Abstract

Censorship in the contemporary context of the People's Republic of China (PRC, hereinafter) refers to the strategies of the Chinese Communist Party governance to exert control over the content and propagation of information in Chinese society (Xiao, 2011) and more specifically, to maintain the status quo of the current regime (King et al., 2013). In the last two decades, Chinese censorship has been the subject of study for researchers who attempted to measure its impact in the press (Bandurski, 2008 and 2015; Repnikova, 2017), in publishing (Chan, 2007; Chang, 2008) and audiovisual (Lynch, 2000; D. Johnson, 2012); as well as in social networks (King et al., 2013; Chen and Yang, 2019). There are, however, relatively few studies that associate the censoring phenomenon with translation, especially with literary translation (Wong, 2017). This doctoral thesis project starts from the analysis of the progress of acceptance and censorship of one of George Orwell’s most representative works: 1984 in contemporary China (1978-present) by taking into account that the various Chinese translations of the political novels of this anti-communist and anti-Stalinist author have a deep correlation with the socio-political situations of the PRC (Xu, 2011). It is proposed to critically study the censorship occurring in the field of literary translation. There are several objectives in the present study. First, taking into account the definition of censorship proposed by Billiani (2007) with respect to translated literary works -censorship in translated literature consists of the action of rewriting and manipulating the discourses of reception of a given translated work rather than banning or cutting it out-, the work seeks to define a scientific model in order to determine the impact of censorship in translated literature, specifically, in the translation and reception of this wellknown Orwellian novel under the social context of communist China. Second, the work also proposes to pinpoint censorship patterns that are repeated in the reception discourses of Chinese translations of the same political satire. Another novel objective suggested in this thesis is to explore what are the reactions of translation agents such as editors, translators and especially Chinese readers to a censored translation. Regarding the latter, the question posed is: Are Chinese readers independent enough to shape their own perception of the translated work despite the censorship it has experienced? To conclude the work, it concludes by searching for viable methods that would counteract the effect of censorship. In order to meet the objectives previously stated, the thesis combines a narratological approach based on the theory of paratextuality (Genette, 1987, 1997, 2001; Kovala, 1996; Gürçağlar, 2002; Müllerová, 2013; Hou, 2013; Rockenberger, 2014; Deuck, 2014; Mittell, 2015; Batchelor , 2018; Pellatt, 2013, 2018) and a qualitativequantitative analysis assisted by the SPSS statistical program that focuses on eleven different translations of Orwell’s novel 1984. Firstly, a review is carried out of the background and main contributions related to Chinese censorship in general, such as journalistic censorship, censorship on social networks, including censorship in translation. This process, in addition to offering justifications for why this thesis studies censorship in translation based on the eleven different translations of 1984 into Chinese, has allowed us to compare our initial perspectives with those already existing and verify the potential for providing new insights on censorship in the field of literary translation. Secondly, the theoretical-methodological framework is defined following the precursory translation works that have analyzed the phenomenon of censorship focusing on paratexts (Kovala, 1996; Boase-Beier and Holman, 1999; Powers, 2001; Merkle, 2002; Tahir -Gürçağlar, 2002; Xiao, 2013; Hall, 2005; Garrido, 2007 and 2011; Castro, 2008; Sonzogni, 2011; Gerber, 2012; McRae, 2012; Pellatt, 2012, 2013, 2018; Hockx, 2015; Inwood, 2015; Munday, 2016; Li, 2017; Amirdabaghian and Shunmugam, 2019; Yalsharzeh, R. et al., 2019; Cao, 2020). This process of theoreticalmethodological definition has shown us the viable methods of studying the paratexts of translations in order to test the Chinese censorship phenomenon that occurs in the process of literary translation. Finally, employing the method proposed in the last process, the qualitative-quantitative analysis is conducted, focusing specifically on fifty-three peritextual elements (10 titles/subtitles, 12 images of the covers and 31 prologues/epilogues of the editor, N= 53), twenty-five official epitexts (6 direct interviews, 2 indirect interviews with the translators and 17 informative memories of the same agents, N=25) and sixty-six unofficial epitexts (22 reader reviews of the translations in the 3 forums of internet: Douban, Zhihu and Bilibili, N=66) of the eleven Chinese translations of Orwell's novel 1984. The first result, with 20% of the three indicator functions (Mystification, Servility and Ideological Manipulation) occupied in all the detected functions, confirmed the existence of censorship in the studied paratexts. They specify that in literary translation, censorship, instead of being an implacable force mutilating completely subversive information as is practiced in other media such as the press, ends up being a more subtle and attenuated measure. It is a practice that lies in manipulating, monopolizing and distorting the reception discourse of a specific literary work in order to control ideas, maintain the status quo and reinforce the reigning political discourse. Secondly, the study demonstrates that there is a statistically significant difference regarding the distribution of censorship indicator functions depending on the type of paratext (10% in peritext vs. 29% in epitext). This result has led us to establish another census pattern. That is, in literary translation, censorship is applied unevenly, so that the epitextual elements, specifically, the criticisms, reviews and comments that are disseminated on the Internet around a translated work, are more controlled than their corresponding peritexts, that is to say, the prologues, epilogues or other types of interpretations of the book in the peritextual space. This discovery contradicts what was proposed in certain previous studies and therefore requires more investigations in the future. In this thesis and to explain this contradictory distribution of censorship in different paratextual elements, we have attributed two reasons. The first consists of the change in habitus (Bourdieu, 1982) of Chinese readers in recent decades with respect to their way of reading. It is considered that the reading preference in digital format (it was noted that 77.4% of readers read on the Internet) has been what has led the Chinese government to intensify and diversify its control and intervention measures in the resources disseminated in the virtual space. The second reason is due to the disinterest that Chinese editors show in using their editorial channel to talk about political issues. For these agents, turning the peritextual space into an advertising and propaganda platform to attract readers and promote book sales without introducing comments related to politics is a pragmatic and intelligent option. Another important finding was the high percentage of the Mystification function (13%) occupied in the identified functions. It was shown that many comments, mostly derived from the translator’s epitexts, express disagreement against the editorial narrative of the novel or the prevailing political discourse, resorting to Mystification strategies (such as the use of metonymy, irony and invented quotes). This allows us to demonstrate that the myth of Chinese intellectual obedience is being broken, since it has become clear that under an increasingly hermetic and xenophobic regime with respect to the diversity of political ideologies, dissident voices still resonate among the Chinese translators of 1984. On the other hand, we observe that the aforementioned Mystification strategies, although they have proven to be measures of self-censorship, ended up being a way in which their authors resist authoritarian power. In this sense, we assume that self-censorship is not always a voluntary mental abortion internalizing criteria, norms, and ways of thinking from the outside (Li, 2020). It could also become a creative practice with which its authors deal with the dominant power. The last result that should be highlighted is the presence of two new functions detected in the paratext: subversion (seeking alternative narratives to the predominant official discourse when presenting the text) and disinformation (intentionally giving manipulated information in the service of the political goal but at the same time with economic interest or simply giving wrong information without conscience when presenting the text). These functions predominantly manifest in the epitext. With this result, we determined that exposed to censorship, Chinese readers express the intention to distance themselves from the editors’ narrative, so that they seek to establish their own reception discourse of 1984; although it is noteworthy that this effort does not necessarily prevent the inclusion of biased perspectives and erroneous ideas in the same discourse. With all the results provided, we conclude that the Chinese censorship phenomenon in the field of literary translation is by no means a dichotomy of containment and resistance and would, therefore, need more empirical studies in the future based on more scientific methodological approaches. The innovative methodological approach we adopted to identify signs of censorship based on paratext analysis has met the research objectives by proving its effectiveness as a tool not only to statistically measure the impact of censorship on the reception discourse of a work but also to provide clues to the censorship phenomenon on the translated work. The same methodological model has also allowed us to approach the discourse of editors, translators and readers in a context of censorship. Regarding the reader’s discourse, we observed that up to the time of starting this study, and despite providing relevant data on the Chinese censorship phenomenon, existing studies on censorship -including those analyzing journalistic material or audiovisual resources- left aside a fundamental issue, which is the real reaction of the receptors (readers, in the case of literature) to a certain censored work. In this sense, our methodological approach has been able to contribute to filling this gap. With all the results obtained with this method of analysis, we are encouraged to propose its application in future studies. Finishing this summary of the thesis, we reiterate that censorship generates a progressive intellectual impoverishment in the public sphere, as Orwell emphasized “..totalitarian propaganda can easily control the opinion of enlightened people in democratic countries” (Orwell, 2002: 1212). This is why we consider it essential for future censorship studies to continue working on the line of research to which this thesis belongs to provide more sources and access that encourage reflection and more public debates based on uncensored reading.