Picturing the dragon : translating Yan Lianke and knowledge production about the PRC

Abstract

Yan Lianke is now among the world’s most renowned Chinese writers. He owes his international success to a body of exuberantly imaginative and profoundly critical works, among them, Serve the People! (2005, English translation 2007), which made possible his emergence into the Anglophone literary scene, and Lenin’s Kisses (2004, English translation 2012), which contributed to his nomination for the Man Booker International Prize 2013. Both novels constitute an inquiry into China’s reality and Chinese people’s soul, and therefore inform Western readers about the PRC. China as produced knowledge is mediated by various agents including translators, publishers and literary critics when transplanted to and disseminated within the Western literary field. By examining the English translations of the two abovementioned books together with the English commentaries of Yan’s novels, this thesis explores how translation participates in knowledge production in the contemporary world. It calls for increased awareness of translation’s capacity to reshape the knowledge encoded in literary works, and provides insights into how to better read and represent Chinese literature. The present study engages in a dialogue with theories of knowledge and knowledge production, the critique of Orientalism, and translation theories. It starts by connecting the translation of Yan Lianke with the history of Western imagination of China and the marginal status of Chinese literature on the international stage. It then establishes Yan as a unique Chinese writer particularly important for Western knowledge production about the PRC. This is followed by detailed comparisons between the Chinese and English versions of Serve the People! and Lenin’s Kisses. The discussion on Serve the People! unveils a much neglected theme of the work, namely the emancipatory power of love, and shows how the systematic underrepresentation of this theme in the translation consolidates the stereotypical negative image of China. The analysis of Lenin’s Kisses focuses on the translator’s inadequate restoration of the characters’ masculinity. The final part of the thesis considers the commentaries surrounding Yan’s six novels in the forms of book reviews, translator’s notes, publisher’s introductions, advertising messages and graphic presentations, and delineates how literary criticism and Orientalist conceptions of China inform one another.