Leo Tak-hung CHAN (Lingnan University – Hong Kong, China)

Marketing and Image-Building: The Translated Literature Series and Nobel Prize-Winning Works in Twentieth-Century China


The introduction of Western literature into China via translations is a crucial aspect of book publishing history in the second half of the twentieth century. Looking back at the special manner in which translations were published, it is clear that the effort was far from piecemeal and random: many series of works by Nobel laureates appeared in both the PRC and Taiwan in the latter half of the previous century. Many publishers, including the most prestigious ones like the Shanghai Publishing House and Crown Publishing Co., specialized in these large-scale publication projects. It turned out that much of the Chinese understanding of the West, built on the reading of so-called “world” masterpieces in translation, was derived for decades from the series of prize-winning works that dominated the publishing scene.
The present paper is an attempt to explore the three-way interaction between translation, publishing and reception, capitalizing on recent advances made in translation studies (by Gideon Toury and Johan Heilbron, among others) and book history research (by David Finkelstein, Roger Chartier, etc.). The questions to be examined include: (a) How successful were the translation series in marketing terms, as opposed to their usefulness in promoting a literary interest in Western works? (b) What sort of relevance was understood to underline the published translations, as propounded by the various presses at the time—in the ancillary material being published (like reviews and promotion pamphlets)? (c) What kind of Chinese “image” of Western literature was built up in this manner, in contrast to what might have been intended by members of the Swedish Academy? In other words, how might the reception of the Western literary canon have been different had it not been mediated by all the translation series in question?