Translation Under Censorship:Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Living History In Chinese

Since the1990s, translation and censorship has become an increasingly important field of translation studies. However, scholars stressed upon translation and censorship in the west. They studied how censorship of translation by target culture agents repressed and filtered parts of source text in terms of public censorship and self-censorship. Although a few scholars examined censorship and translation in the Chinese Mainland, they rarely discussed censorship and translation after the Reform and Opening up to the Outside World. After the Reform and Opening up to the Outside World, censorship of translations became more complex, implicit and subtle, and it deserved to be explored. Moreover, most previous studies overlooked the importance of structural censorship, participation of source culture agents and constitutive effects of censorship and translation in the Chinese Mainland.The present thesis conducts a case study on the Chinese translation of Hillary Clinton’s autobiography Living History published by Yilin Press-a leading Chinese Mainland state-owned publishing house. First, it summarizes the dispute between the author Hillary Clinton and Yilin Press. Then, it examines chapters22and33which were claimed to be demonstrating most blatant Chinese Mainland censorship by the author. Chinese Mainland Yilin’s translation Qinli Lishi (《亲历历史》)is compared with US source text Living History and Taiwan China Times’translation Huochu Lishi:Xilarui Huiyilu (《活出历史：希拉里回忆录》)Since both Yilin’s and China Times’translations were published in2003and translated by the same group of translators, manipulation due to linguistic differences and literary tastes of various periods was negligible. Moreover, as Yilin’s translation was a translation and edited text based on China Times’translation, comparison of the two reveals the effect of cultural factors-especially ideological factor and censorship-as chapters22and33under examination are Hillary Clinton’s comments on Chinese internal affairs and China-US relations, showing the contrasting US and Chinese Mainland ideologies. Hillary Clinton is hostile to Beijing and some of the contents in this book may be unfair to the Chinese government. The present thesis analyzes the relationship between censorship and translation in the Chinese Mainland through discussing public censorship, including censorship departments at central and local levels and rules and regulations, structural censorship in terms of dual structure of Chinese government, love Party education and ownership of Yilin Press, and self-censorship as that carried out by publishing house, editors and translators. It intends to reveal a more comprehensive picture of factors leading to censorship of translation of the case in point, and hence censorship and translation in the Chinese Mainland in general.It has three contributions to previous studies of censorship and translation in contemporary Chinese Mainland. First, different from previous understanding that only agents from target culture participated in censorship and translation, the present thesis discovers that the author, the publisher and media of the source culture also censored translations. Besides, the present thesis supplements previous studies in that it demonstrates that not only public censorship and self-censorship took place, but structural censorship also played a part. Structural censorship influenced mode, degree and implementation of public censorship and self-censorship. It also affected incentives of publishing houses, editors and translators to follow rules and regulations stipulated by public censors to undergo self-censorship. Furthermore, the present thesis notices that censorship of translation in the present case study had a constitutive effect never discussed before-it amplified the silenced.