ARCHIV ORIENTÁLNÍ 85, 2017 • 253

George Kin Leung’s English Translation

of Lu Xun’s A Q Zhengzhuan
Baorong Wang

I. INTRODUCTION

Gideon Toury’s target-oriented approach to studying literary translations is based

on his generally held assumption that “translations are facts of target cultures.”1
That is, translations are, as a rule, initiated and produced in the target culture with
a readership in that culture in mind. This paper, however, presents an exceptional
case which challenges the above assumption. It indicates that in mid-Republican
years (1920s–1930s) some foreign-language translations of Chinese literature
were actually initiated and produced in China, i.e., the source culture, intended for
both foreign nationals in China and bilingual Chinese readers. Translations of this
nature include those done into English, French, German, Russian and Japanese,
but translations into English – the most important foreign language at the time
– undoubtedly outnumbered those into the other languages. And the latter was
often targeted chiefly at expatriate audiences. Hence, this paper is focused on
English translations of Chinese literature produced in the Republican period. The
case under study is the first English version of A Q Zhengzhuan 阿Q正传 [The
True Story of Ah Q], the internationally famed novella by Lu Xun 鲁迅 (1881–
1936) who is generally recognized as the “father of modern Chinese literature.”
The translator is Chinese-American George Kin Leung 梁社乾 (1899–1977), and
the publisher is the Shanghai-based Commercial Press 商务印书馆. As Chang
has argued, Toury’s above assumption is obviously not “entirely valid” because
it is doubtful whether such source culture-initiated foreign-language translations
of Chinese literature published by Chinese publishers “are really intended to
function in the target culture.”2
While Leung’s rendering epitomizes translations of this nature (analyzed
below by drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of the field of cultural production),
the case itself is unique in terms of Leung’s personal ideology and poetics as
well as the circumstances of the translation and publication. All these socio-
cultural and personal factors determined the shape of Leung’s translation, which
will be analyzed with reference to the notion of “initial norm.” According to
Toury, the initial norm governs the translator’s basic choice between two polar

1
Toury, Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond, 29.
2
Chang, “Auto-Image and Norms in Source-Initiated Translation in China,” 97.

ArOr – Issue 85.2 ISSN 0044-8699 © 2017 Oriental Institute (CAS), Prague

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alternatives regarding the translation’s overall orientation: adequacy (adherence

to the norms of the original text and those of the source language and culture)
and acceptability (adherence to the norms of the target language and culture).
However, no translation is entirely adequate or acceptable since “even the most
adequacy-oriented translation involves shifts from the source text.”3
Another useful analytical tool is found in Lefevere’s theory of rewriting.
According to Lefevere, there are two control mechanisms which operate within
and outside the literary system. The internal factor, represented by professionals
like literary critics, reviewers, editors, translators, tries to control the literary
system from the inside within the parameters set by the external factor which he
calls “patronage.” The professionals tend to “rewrite” literary works until they
are deemed acceptable to the poetics (the dominant concept of what literature
should be) and the ideology (the dominant concept of what society should be) of a
certain time and place. However, the actions of the professionals are constrained
by their patrons (powerful persons, publishers, the media, etc.) because the patron
ensures that the professional can make a living and maintain their social status.
The patron is usually more concerned about the ideology of literature than its
poetics and therefore tends to relegate authority to the professional where poetics
is concerned.4 Accordingly, the shape of a translation is often determined by two
factors: “the translator’s ideology … and the poetics dominant in the receiving
literature at the time the translation is made.” However, “the ideology dictates the
basic strategy the translator is going to use …”5 It follows that the translator may
choose either to embrace the poetics dominant in the target culture or embody his
personal poetics in the translation.
Owing to his international stature, English translations of Lu Xun’s works
have been studied actively in China in the recent years. But Leung’s pioneering
translation has hitherto remained under-researched probably for three reasons:
as a product of the source culture it is often dismissed as insignificant; it reads
awkwardly owing to the literalistic approach adopted by Leung; the translation is
now hard to obtain and it is difficult for the researcher to obtain essential source
material. The present author argues that Leung’s translation merits study not just
for its historical significance, but also because it can shed light on the dynamics of
the sub-field of source culture-initiated foreign language translations of Chinese
literature in Republican China. More specifically, it raises the following questions:
(1) Why did this sub-field emerge in Republican China? On what basis did it
operate? What was Leung’s position in this sub-field?

3
Toury, Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond, 56–57.
4
Lefevere, Translation, Rewriting, and the Manipulation of Literary Fame, 14–16.
5
Ibid., 41.

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(2) Why was Leung chosen as Lu Xun’s translator? What motivated Leung to
translate Lu Xun’s novella?
(3) What is the shape of Leung’s translation? What personal and socio-political
factors internal to Chinese culture determined its textual features?
(4) How was Leung’s translation received? How should we evaluate Leung’s
translation in particular and source culture-initiated foreign language translations
of Chinese literature in general?
This paper attempts to answer these questions by examining Leung’s translation
through an analysis of both the translated text and the socio-cultural context in
which it was made.

II. GEORGE KIN LEUNG AND THE SUB-FIELD OF SOURCE

CULTURE-INITIATED FOREIGN-LANGUAGE TRANSLATIONS
OF CHINESE LITERATURE IN REPUBLICAN CHINA

Even today we have only limited

Fig. 1. George Kin Leung at the West
Lake in Hangzhou, Zhejiang,
in 1925.
Courtesy of Mr. Richard Chan Bing
knowledge about Leung available from an
entry in the biographical dictionary Who’s
Who in China6 and a biographical sketch
published in the Shanghai-based British-
run China Journal.7 The two sources
contain roughly the same information
about Leung. Ge Baoquan 戈宝权
provides slightly more information, but
the biographical sketch he gives is based
on the Who’s Who in China entry, which
is fragmentary and even inaccurate. For
instance, it says that Leung “was born
in 1889” and he finished high school “in
June 1918.”8 There must be a factual error
here as a normal student cannot finish
high school at the age of thirty! And Ge
Baoquan’s information goes only as
far as the year 1937 as he declares, “No
materials are currently available to help
6
Anonymous, “George Kin Leung 梁社乾,” 153.
7
Anonymous, “Leung, George Kin,” 48.
8
Anonymous, “George Kin Leung 梁社乾,” 153.

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us trace Leung’s whereabouts after the second Sino-Japanese War broke out in
1937.”9 Fortunately, in early 2015, the present author was contacted via e-mail by
Leung’s nephew, Mr. Richard Chan Bing, now living in Mount Pleasant, South
Carolina, U.S.A. With the photos of and more biographical information about
Leung sent to the author by Mr. Chan, it is now possible to piece together Leung’s
life history, though it is still sketchy. (For more biographical information about
Leung see Wang, Yiyu de tiyan.)
George Kin Leung is best known in the 1920s–1930s as “an authority on the
traditional dramatic art of China and its modern exponents.”10 On July 17, 1899, he
was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, U.S.A., to Joe Hing Leung and Mamie Chan
Bing, both immigrants from Hong Kong. His father, a native of Xinhui District in
Guangdong 广东新会, was for a time engaged in import and export business in
Atlantic City. After finishing high school in Atlantic City in 1918, George went to
college somewhere in California and later on studied drama and music in New York
City. His interest in the theater and the beauty of nature would endure throughout
his lifetime. After his father died and his mother remarried, George moved to China
in the early 1920s with his father’s inheritance. While in China, he did not keep a
regular job and led a wanderer’s life, living in several cities – Beijing, Shanghai,
Hangzhou, and Guangzhou. Apparently out of admiration for Su Manshu 苏
曼殊 (1884–1918), the romantic Buddhist-monk translator and writer who was
born in Japan and lived a floating life, Leung translated Su’s most famous novella
Duanhong Lingyan Ji 断鸿零雁记 (written in classical Chinese) into English.
According to Liu Wu-Chi, it is arguably “a major Chinese novel [sic] of love after
Dream of the Red Chamber [红楼梦]” and its popularity continued in the 1920s
and 1930s.11 Leung’s translation, entitled The Lone Swan, was published by the
Commercial Press in 1924. Then Leung turned to Lu Xun’s novella written in
vernacular Chinese. His translation was brought out in October 1926 by the same
publisher. This marked the end of Leung’s enterprise of translating Chinese literature
as subsequently he devoted himself to the Chinese theater, which remained his
lifelong pursuit. He wrote on such topics as Peking opera, Cantonese plays and the
modern spoken drama, and his articles appeared in a number of Chinese, British
and American journals. In 1929, to prepare for Mei Lanfang’s 梅兰芳 American
tour, the Commercial Press published Mei Lan-fang: Foremost Actor of China and
Repertoire for the American Tour of Mei Lan-fang, both of which Leung compiled
and translated into English. The two books “were instrumental in introducing the

9
Ge Baoquan, A Q Zhengzhuan zai guowai, 24. All the English translations from the Chinese
sources, unless otherwise specified, are made by the present author.
10
Anonymous, “Front Matter: Contributors,” Pacific Affairs 2, no. 4 (Apr., 1929).
11
Liu, Su Man-Shu, 94–96.

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art of the actor to the American public on his tour and aroused a wide interest
in the Chinese theater.”12 And Mei’s performances in New York and Washington
D.C. in the spring of 1930 were “widely acclaimed” by both drama critics and
theatergoers.13 The biography of Mei Lanfang established Leung’s reputation as
“a recognized authority on the Chinese stage.”14 Between 1930 and 1937 Leung
lived with several servants in the famous Ban Mou Yuan 半亩园 [Half-acre Garden]
in Beijing.15
With the unrest from Japanese invasion of China, Leung returned to the U.S.
in September 1937 – he first lived in Washington D.C. and later moved to New
York City. He lectured on traditional Chinese theater at Cornell University and
Yale University. In 1940–41 he published in the New York Times five articles
on Chinese gardens and gardening. He performed at the Phillips Collection
(a museum in Washington D.C.) in the late 1940s. Later in his life he was
employed as a translator for the City of New York, interpreting for Chinese
immigrants who could not speak English in the court. Leung never married or
fathered any children. He died in New York on January 11, 1977. 
Leung’s case indicates that there existed a sub-field of source culture-initiated
foreign language translations of Chinese literature in Republican China, though
translation into Chinese was undoubtedly the mainstream practice in this transitional
period.16 According to Bourdieu, the structure of the field of cultural production is
based on “two fundamental and quite different oppositions”: first, the opposition
between “the sub-field of restricted production and the sub-field of large-scale
production, i.e., between two economies, two time-scales, two audiences,”
and secondly, “the opposition within the sub-field of restricted production.”17
Bourdieu’s theory leads us to posit that in Republican China Chinese translations
of foreign literatures targeted at the Chinese reading public constituted a sub-field
of large-scale production while foreign-language translations of Chinese literature
intended for a much smaller audience can be construed as a sub-field of restricted
production. Furthermore, within the sub-field of restricted production itself, we
can further distinguish translations targeted at audiences in foreign countries from
those intended for both expatriate and domestic readers in China. The former is
exemplified by Edgar Snow and Yao Ke’s 姚克 cooperative effort Living China:
Modern Chinese Short Stories published in London in 1936 and in New York

12
Anonymous, “George Kin Leung 梁社乾,” 153.
13
Anonymous, “Mei Lan-fang,” 316.
14
B. G., “Review of Mei Lan-fang: Foremost Actor of China,” 613.
15
Bodde, “Review of Gardens of China,” 282.
16
For details, see Hung and Pollard, “Chinese Tradition,” 376.
17
Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production, 53.

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the following year. As for the latter, another notable case is Lin Yutang’s 林语
堂 English version of Fusheng Liuji 浮生六记 [Six Chapters of a Floating Life],
an autobiographical prose work by the early Qing author Shen Fu 沈复 (1763–
1825). Lin’s translation was serialized in two Shanghai-based English-language
magazines before being published in a bilingual format by the Hsi Feng Press
西风社 in Shanghai in 1939. According to Bourdieu, while the functioning of
the sub-field of large-scale production is ruled by the laws of the market, i.e.,
economic profit-driven, the sub-field of restricted production operates on the basis
of the “accumulation of symbolic capital,” i.e., a recognized, legitimate “credit”
which under certain conditions, often in the long run, guarantees economic profits.
Accordingly, all the participants in this sub-field – authors, critics, translators,
publishers, etc. – strive for “making a name” for themselves, for a “capital of
consecration” implying a power to consecrate literary works or authors, translators,
and critics.18 It can therefore be argued that, for translators born with a Chinese
culture identity like Lin Yutang and George Kin Leung, their translation practices
were intended mainly to accumulate symbolic capital in the field or in certain
cases to seek cultural honor in the Chinese context.
The emergence in Republican China of a sub-field of source culture-initiated
English translations of Chinese literature is a significant socio-cultural event, which
has hitherto been under-researched in and outside of China. Several socio-cultural
factors contributed to its emergence. Firstly, there was an urge within Chinese
society itself to introduce Chinese literature and culture to the outside world. After
the doors of the Qing Empire were forced open by the Western powers in the 1860s,
there emerged in early Republican China a new generation of modern Chinese
intellectuals who had either studied abroad or attended missionary schools in China.
Well conversant with Western languages and cultures, they were both eager and
able to interpret Chinese culture for Western readers. Pioneers like Su Manshu and
Gu Hongming 辜鸿铭 (1857–1928) had already come to the fore around the turn
of the century, but it was not until the 1930s that “the traffic in this direction were of
any consequence.”19 Their translation endeavors, together with the internationalist
English periodicals they edited and contributed to, constituted a “transnational and
translational cultural front” intended “to advance the agenda of internationalism.”20
Secondly, there was a niche market for such translations in Republican
China. On one hand, some foreign residents in treaty-port cities (e.g., Shanghai,
Tianjin and Beijing) were interested in reading translated Chinese literature to
learn about Chinese culture and society. On the other hand, a rapidly expanding

18
Ibid., 75.
19
Hung and Pollard, “Chinese Tradition,” 376.
20
Shen, Cosmopolitan Publics, 96, 99.

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 George Kin Leung’s English Translation of Lu Xun’s A Q Zhengzhuan • 259

domestic readership was in need of such translations as language learning

materials, indicating that “these translations are done from the source culture
to the source culture.”21 The latter is testified to by the fact that the Commercial
Press published many Chinese-English literary translations in a bilingual format,
so that it “contributed to the spread of English in Chinese education and public
life.”22 According to a recent study, a domestic English-reading population
increased rapidly in the early Republican period (roughly 1911–27) when English
became a de facto auxiliary language along with Guoyu (“national language”). In
fact, both languages functioned as “forms of cultural capital” for those aspiring
bourgeois, cosmopolitan Chinese learners.23
Thirdly, an English-language periodical publishing industry flourished in
treaty-port cities, especially Shanghai, in the Republican period. This was
made possible not only because there was a large audience receptive to such
publications, but also because at that time “the Chinese government’s control over
the press (in any language) was weak.”24 According to Gibbs and Li, the works of
at least thirty modern Chinese writers were translated into English between 1919
and 1949, and many of these translations first appeared in a handful of Shanghai-
based internationalist English periodicals, including China Forum (1932–34),
People’s Tribune 民众论坛 (1931–42), T’ien Hsia Monthly 天下月刊 (1935–41),
and China Journal of Science & Arts (1923–41).25 These publications served
as an important channel through which English translation of modern Chinese
literature could reach their audiences.
Finally, there was a cohort of competent translators who were ready and willing
to undertake the job, either to pursue the agenda of internationalism or out of
economic necessity or for both. Most of them were either returnees who had been
trained in Europe or the United States or both (e.g., Lin Yutang) or graduates of
missionary schools in China (e.g., Yao Ke of St. John’s University in Shanghai)
while some translators were foreign nationals (e.g., Edgar Snow) or overseas
Chinese (e.g., George Kin Leung) who happened to be working or residing in
China. As Eva Hung has pointed out, these people were often in a unique position
to make acquaintance with modern Chinese writers whose works appealed to
them and to offer their service as translator. “With the translator as key figure
working closely with the author, this should be an ideal situation.”26 However,

21
Harman, “Foreign Culture, Foreign Style,” 15.
22
Shen, Cosmopolitan Publics, 12.
23
Hill, “Between English and Guoyu,” 128, 131.
24
Wagner, “Don’t Mind the Gap!”
25
Gibbs and Li, Bibliography.
26
Hung, “Blunder or Service?,” 41.

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as will be analyzed below, the circumstances of the translator’s working with the
author are not always “ideal,” but in certain cases could produce negative effects
on the translation.
To sum up, the socio-cultural conditions in early Republican China nurtured
a sub-field of source culture-initiated foreign language translations of modern
Chinese literature. The functioning of the sub-field was instrumental in advancing
the agenda of internationalism and introducing modern Chinese literature to a
foreign readership. Credited with the first English translations of both Lu Xun’s
and Su Manshu’s fictional masterpiece, Leung is indisputably a key contributor to
this sub-field. Regrettably, his interest soon switched to Chinese drama which can
be construed as another sub-field of limited cultural production. It was in this field
that Leung as a dominant agent in the 1920s–1930s played a more important part.

III. CIRCUMSTANCES OF TRANSLATION AND PUBLICATION

OF LEUNG’S VERSION

Ideally, the work of a literary master like Lu Xun should be placed in the masterly
hands of an accomplished translator. Then, why was it an amateur translator like
Leung who first tried his hands on A Q Zhengzhuan? The reason was a combination
of the socio-cultural milieu and Leung’s personal circumstances, i.e., Leung both
chose to and was chosen to translate Lu Xun’s novella. As Edgar Snow observes,
in the 1920s–1930s most foreigners, including Western sinologists, thought that
“there was nothing of much value” in modern Chinese literature.27 Harold Acton
also notes that when asked why no Sinologue would translate modern Chinese
literature, “the Sinologue will sullenly observe that there is ‘an absence of real
creative spirit’ in the Chinese literature of today.”28 It was not until the 1950s
that modern Chinese literature began to be seriously studied in European and
American academic institutions. Hence, early English and French translations of
Lu Xun’s fiction were for the most part produced by native Chinese translators
or translators of Chinese descent.29 As A Q Zhengzhuan was first published in
book form by the Xinchao Press 新潮社 in Beijing in 1923, a time when Leung
just arrived in China, he became one of its potential translators. And when his
translation The Lone Swan was successfully published by the Commercial Press
the next year, it was only natural that he became the chosen translator for Lu
Xun’s novella.

27
Snow, “Introduction,” in Living China, 13.
28
Acton, “The Creative Spirit in Modern Chinese Literature,” 374–75.
29
Eber, “The Reception of Lu Xun in Europe and America,” 248.

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Meanwhile, it was certainly also the translator’s own choice. Firstly, Leung’s
linguistic competence in both Chinese and English made him a promising
translator from the Chinese. He threw himself into translating Lu Xun’s novella
presumably because he found himself fitting for the job. In doing so he tried
to convert his linguistic capital into symbolic capital in the Bourdieusian sense.
Secondly, translating Lu Xun’s work was probably one of the best ways for
him to make a name for himself in the Chinese context. According to Leung,
he chose A Q Zhengzhuan for translation because Lu Xun was the “great writer
of the modern school” and the novella was “one of the most popular” of Lu
Xun’s fiction.30 Hence, offering his service as a translator of Lu Xun’s work
could bring him “reflected fame” in Lu Xun’s words,31 if not commercial success.
Thirdly, the novella’s theme, subject matter and style were to his liking. Leung
notes that the novella was meant to give voice to one of the illiterate millions
“who for more than four thousand years have been almost neglected in what
is considered the best of recognized Chinese literature.” The original Chinese
moves along “in a rippling, humorous, and distinctive style,” but beneath each
word one can hear “the cry of the poor oppressed rustic and the author’s protest
against all sham and petty meanness.”32 Obviously, Leung interpreted the story as
one of social protest by giving voice to the poor and the oppressed. He admired
it chiefly because of the spirit of democracy and protest he sensed in the story,
though its thrust – the negative depiction and sarcastic critique of the Chinese
national character – may have escaped Leung’s notice. Finally, Leung’s decision
to translate Lu Xun’s novella was reinforced by the critical acclaim given to The
Lone Swan. Carleton Lacy notes, “Westerners, resident in China, read too little
of Chinese literature. Too little of it has been made available [in English]. The
translator of ‘The Lone Swan’ has done a real service in presenting this readable
volume of romance mixed with poetry and religion.”33 Thus encouraged, Leung
turned to A Q Zhengzhuan critically acclaimed as “another landmark in literary
accomplishment,”34 in hopes that it would help him obtain more symbolic capital.
Leung corresponded with Lu Xun during and after the translation process,
though the existing literature indicates that he never met Lu Xun. It is necessary
to examine their correspondence because it had potentially significant effects on
the literalistic approach to translation which Leung adopted.
The Leung-Lu correspondence is recorded in Lu Xun’s diary, but none of the
letters exchanged between them is now extant. Leung notes that his translation
30
Leung, “Appendix,” in The True Story of Ah Q, 93, 96.
31
Lu Xun, The Complete Stories of Lu Xun, 76.
32
Leung, “Preface,” in The True Story of Ah Q, vi.
33
Lacy, “Review of The Lone Swan,” 259.
34
Liu, Su Man-Shu, 96.

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was based on the Chinese original contained in the Beixin Book Company’s
北新书局 edition of Nahan 呐喊 [Call to Arms] published in May 1924.35 He
completed his draft translation in Shanghai in the spring of 1925. Then Leung
decided that he should write to Lu Xun, who was then living in Beijing, to obtain
the translation rights and to seek the author’s assistance in clarifying some
ambiguities in his understanding of the story. In response, Lu Xun granted him
the translation rights, sent him printed matter, including two copies of his novella,
and “graciously” answered his “many inquires.”36 Lu Xun received Leung’s first
letter on May 2, 1925 via a Commercial Press editor who was probably Zhou
Jianren 周建人, Lu Xun’s third younger brother.37 On June 14, 1925, Lu Xun
received from Leung a second letter together with the manuscripts of his English
translation. In this letter Leung presumably requested the author to peruse his
translation and give suggestions for improvement. Lu Xun replied to Leung six
days later, sending back what he called the jiaozheng 校正 [revised] version of
Leung’s work. But it is highly doubtful that Lu Xun, who according to reliable
sources did not know much English,38 could help improve the quality of Leung’s
translation. Nevertheless, Lu Xun might have been able to check the English with
the Chinese despite his limited knowledge of English. And if he had done that
carefully enough, he could have spotted at least some of the drastic omissions in
Leung’s translation. Since all these omissions escaped Lu Xun’s notice, we can
assume safely that he did not read Leung’s translation carefully. Between July
2, 1925 and January 11, 1926 Leung sent Lu Xun four letters, two of which Lu
Xun answered. In these letters they discussed the ambiguities and difficulties
Leung ran into while reading the original text. Some of Lu Xun’s replies and
explanations were incorporated in the thirteen notes attached to the end of the
translation. On December 11, 1926 Lu Xun, then teaching at Xiamen University
in Fujian, received six copies of The True Story of Ah Q which Leung sent him
from Shanghai. As shown by Lu Xun’s diary, this marks the end of Leung’s brief
correspondence with Lu Xun.39

35
Leung, “Appendix,” in The True Story of Ah Q, 96.
36
Idem, “Preface,” in The True Story of Ah Q, vi–vii.
37
Ge Baoquan, A Q Zhengzhuan zai guowai, 20–21.
38
Edgar Snow, who interviewed Lu Xun several times in Shanghai, reports that Lu Xun “knows
little English.” (Snow, “Lu Shun – Master of Pai-hua,” 43). Zhou Zuoren, Lu Xun’s second
younger brother who had excellent command of English, writes, “Lu Xun did not like English.
When admitted to the Naval Academy in Nanjing in 1898, he studied English for some time. …
But soon he transferred to the School of Mines and Railways and he quitted English altogether.”
(Zhou Zuoren, “Lu Xun yu Yingwen,” 189).
39
For Lu Xun’s diary entries cited here, see Lu Xun quanji 鲁迅全集 [The Complete Works of Lu
Xun] [hereafter LXQJ], Vol. 15, 563, 569–74, 604, 648–49.

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Before Leung’s package arrived, the Commercial Press had already sent in
three copies of Leung’s translation, which Lu Xun received on November 30.
Upon receipt, Lu Xun gave one copy each to Lin Yutang and Sun Fuyuan 孙
伏园 who were proficient in English. Lin and Sun were then working with Lu
Xun at Xiamen University, and it was highly likely that they read through the
small book and told Lu Xun how they thought about Leung’s translation. On
December 3, three days after receiving the books from the publisher, Lu Xun
wrote to his common-law wife Xu Guangping 许广平: “The English version of
A Q Zhengzhuan has just come out. It appears that on the whole the translation is
not bad, though it contains a number of minor errors.”40 On the same day Lu Xun
wrote his oft-quoted article “A Q Zhengzhuan de chengyin”《阿Q正传》的成
因 [How Was A Q Zhengzhuan Written], in which he commented on his novella’s
earliest English and French versions (the latter was rendered by Jing Yinyu 敬隐
渔 [1901–30?]):

The French version, which appeared in the August issue of Europe, is only one-
third of the original,41 so it was apparently abridged. It seems that the English
version was done in a very serious and earnest manner, but as I know little English
I can hardly comment. Yet still I chanced upon two places which I think deserve
further discussion.42

The original words which Lu Xun used to comment on Leung’s version were
hen kenqie 很恳切, meaning literally “very serious and earnest.” This should be
understood as passing a general comment on Leung’s attitude towards his work
rather than on the translation itself. Lu Xun was apparently displeased with Jing
Yinyu for truncating his story and he praised Leung for treating it seriously and
earnestly. But did Leung really translate in such a manner as Lu Xun thought?
Did he grant himself some license when treating certain aspects of the Chinese
original which he found ideologically unacceptable or artistically imperfect? We
shall find the answers in the following section.

40
Lu Xun, “Liangdi shu” 两地书 [Letters between Lu Xun and Xu Guangping], in LXQJ, vol. 11,
233.
41
The truncated French version appeared in two installments in the May and June 1926 issues of
Europe under the title of “La Vie de Ah Qui.”
42
Lu Xun, “A Q Zhengzhuan de chengyin,” in LXQJ, vol. 3, 400.

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IV. LEUNG’S VERSION DESCRIBED

On the whole, Leung’s English text appears to stay so close to the Chinese text
that it strikes the reader as embarrassingly awkward. Leung’s English style is
not merely “flat and stilted,”43 “halting,”44 but also unbending, verbose, and
unidiomatic. The sentences tend to be too long and involved. The translator’s
habitual use of transliterations for address forms and titles, and word-for-word
translation of Chinese idioms and classical allusions make the translation obscure
and unintelligible. For example, the honorific title Juren Laoye举人老爷45 [a
successful provincial candidate at the imperial examinations] is fully transliterated
as “Chü-jen Lao-yeh,”46 which is unintelligible to the English reader. One more
example suffices to show the awkward literalness of Leung’s translation:

他很想即刻揪住他，拗断他的竹筷，放下他的辫子，并且批他几个嘴巴，
聊且惩罚他忘了生辰八字，也敢来做革命党的罪。但他终于饶放了，单是
怒目而视的吐一口唾沫道“呸！”47 [Gloss: He wanted very much to seize him
then and there, break his bamboo chopstick, let down his queue and slap his face
several times to punish him for forgetting his place and for his presumption in
becoming a revolutionary. But in the end he let him off, simply fixing him with a
furious glare, spitting, and exclaiming, “Pah!”].48
He very much desired to seize him at once, break up the bamboo chopstick, let
down his queue, and give him a few slaps on the mouth in the bargain, merely to
punish him for forgetting his humble birth and destiny and for having the audacity
to be guilty of the offense of becoming a Revolutionist. But in the end, Ah Q let him
go, merely glaring at him with angry eyes and emitting a mouthful of spittle as he
sneered, “Peh!”49

It is not hard to see that the translation is both rigidly literal and redundant.
Even the sentence structure and the word order correspond too strictly to the
Chinese original. For example, Ta hen xiang jike jiuzhu ta 他很想即刻揪住他
is rendered awkwardly as “He very much desired to seize him at once,” where

43
Yang, “Lu Xun (Lu Hsün) 1881-1936,” 868.
44
Kowallis, “Review of Diary of a Madman and Other Stories,” 283.
45
Lu Xun, A Q Zhengzhuan阿Q正传, in LXQJ, vol. 1, 537.
46
Idem, The True Story of Ah Q, 58. Note that the Wade-Giles system was adopted in Leung’s
version.
47
Idem, A Q Zhengzhuan, 543–44.
48
The glosses given in this paper are all based on the Yangs’ 1981 version (Lu Xun, The Complete
Stories of Lu Xun).
49
Lu Hsun, The True Story of Ah Q, 71.

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“very much” should be placed after the verb “desired” in a pleasant English style.
Meanwhile, literalness often leads to redundancy. Shengchen bazi 生辰八字
refers to the eight characters signifying the year, month, day and hour of a person’s
birth. Superstitious people believe that one’s eight characters predetermine one’s
fortune. In the context, wangle shengchen bazi 忘了生辰八字is a colloquialism
which can be rendered into the English expression “to forget one’s place.” Leung
attempts a literal rendering, without realizing that “forgetting his humble birth”
is already clear and adequate while “forgetting his destiny” is at once superfluous
and unclear. And Leung treats the noun phase gan lai zuo Gemingdang de zui
敢来做革命党的罪 too cautiously: He uses two semantically repetitive phrases
“be guilty of” and “the offense of” to convey the sense of zui 罪 [crime] which
is not significant in the text. In the second sentence we find more redundancies:
since “to glare” means “to stare angrily or fiercely,” “with angry eyes” can be
omitted; likewise, tu yikou tuomo 吐一口唾沫 [to spit] is translated clumsily into
“emitting a mouthful of spittle.”
Although Leung’s translation is, basically, cautious and literalistic, it is still
marred by quite a number of mistranslations. For example, the Confucian Analects
allusion erli zhi nian“而立”之年50 [at the age of thirty] is mistranslated as “at
the late age of forty.”51 Below is another example:

他的老婆不跳第四回井，也不是好女人。52 [Gloss: His wife did not attempt to

jump into the well a fourth time, so she was not a good woman either.]
and if his wife had not jumped into the well the fourth time, she would not have
been a good woman.53

Here what Ah Q actually means to say is: the “Bogus” Foreign Devil’s wife
did not attempt a fourth time to throw herself into the well to end her life, so
she is not a virtuous woman. Yet Leung’s use of the subjunctive mood has just
reversed the original sense: “She is a good woman because she did throw herself
into the well for a fourth time.” Another example is sanbai da qian jiu er chuan三
百大钱九二串54 mentioned by Lu Xun in his comments on Leung’s translation.
According to Lu Xun, this refers to “three hundred cash, with ninety-two round
coins for one hundred.”55 But it is mistranslated as “three hundred coppers and
ninety-two cash.”56 These mistranslations indicate that Leung was not perfectly
50
Idem, A Q Zhengzhuan, 525.
51
Idem, The True Story of Ah Q, 30.
52
Idem, A Q Zhengzhuan, 522.
53
Idem, The True Story of Ah Q, 23.
54
Idem, A Q Zhengzhuan, 535.
55
Idem, “A Q Zhengzhuan de Chengyin,” in LXQJ, vol. 3, 400.

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steeped in traditional Chinese culture (the first example) and vernacular Chinese
(the second example). And as the third example shows, Leung failed to work out,
by consulting Lu Xun or others, all the ambiguities and difficulties he ran into
while reading the original text.
On the whole, Leung’s version leans towards adequacy owing to the literalistic
approach he adopted. However, as Toury observes, “even the most adequacy-
oriented translation involves shifts from the source text.”57 In fact, sometimes
Leung also takes liberties with the original by addition, omission and alteration.
Apart from several minor cuts in Leung’s version, there is one significant omission
made to the following passage which relates the lice-catching competition
between Ah Q and Whiskers Wang:

阿Q也脱下破夹袄来，翻检了一回，不知道因为新洗呢还是因为粗心，许多
工夫只捉到三四个。他看那王胡，却是一个又一个，两个又三个，只放在嘴
里毕毕剥剥的响。阿Q最初是失望，后来却不平了：看不上眼的王胡尚且那么
多，自己倒反这样少，这是怎样的大失体统的事呵！他很想寻一两个大的，
然而竟没有，好容易才捉到一个中的，恨恨的塞在厚嘴唇里，狠命一咬，劈
的一声，又不及王胡的响。他癞疮疤块块通红了，…58 [Gloss: Ah Q took off
his tattered lined jacket, and turned it inside out. But either because he had washed it
recently or because he was too clumsy, a long search yielded only three or four lice. He
saw Whiskers Wang catching first one and then another in swift succession, cracking
them between his teeth with a popping sound. Ah Q felt disappointed, and then
resentful: the despicable Whiskers Wang could catch so many lice while he himself
caught so few. What a loss of face! He wanted to catch one or two big ones, but there
were none. When finally he managed to catch a middle-sized one, stuffed it fiercely
between his thick lips and bit hard, the resultant pop was again inferior to the noise
made by Whiskers Wang. All his ringworm patches turned scarlet.]
After Ah Q slipped off his tattered short lined coat, Wang-hu’s actions became
irritating and Ah Q gradually lost his temper, each of his impetigo scars coloring
red.59

The above passage is drastically omitted and condensed: Leung removes the
entire episode except the two Chinese sentences in bold and then tries to compensate
for the loss by summarizing the passage as “Wang-hu’s actions became irritating
and Ah Q gradually lost his temper.”

56
Idem, The True Story of Ah Q, 52.
57
Toury, Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond, 56–57.
58
Lu Xun, A Q Zhengzhuan, 520.
59
Idem, The True Story of Ah Q, 20.

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According to Zhou Zuoren 周作人, Lu Xun scorned some Chinese scholar-

officials’ eccentric thinking that “dirt is better than cleanness, and ugliness is
better than beauty.”60 Therefore, by relating a farcical louse-catching contest
between two village louts Lu Xun tries to satirize the abnormal mentality of
his contemporaries – the ludicrous technique of self-belittlement. Meanwhile,
through Ah Q’s preposterous reasoning that “the despicable Whiskers Wang
could catch so many lice while he himself caught so few. What a loss of face!” Lu
Xun criticizes the self-aggrandizement of those Chinese who refuse to face the
wealth and strength of the West and Japan, both of which China used to despise.
Accordingly, the louse-catching episode is a veiled critique of the Chinese
national character. But with its removal from the translation, the novella’s critical
power has been seriously weakened.
In contrast to edit-outs, Leung occasionally “edits in” something to the English
text. An interesting addition is inserted at the end of both Chapter V (“Problems
of Livelihood”) and Chapter VIII (“Barred from the Revolutionary Party”):

待三个萝卜吃完时,他已经打定了进城的主意了。61 [Gloss: By the time the

third turnip was finished, he had made up his mind to go to town.]
And so by the time he had devoured the three turnips, he had made up his mind
to go to the city, where he remained for some time, passing through some unusual
experiences.62
阿Q越想越气，终于禁不住满心痛恨起来，毒毒的点一点头：“不准我造反，
只准你造反！妈妈的假洋鬼子，——好，你造反！造反是杀头的罪名呵，我
总要告一状，看你抓进县里去杀头，——满门抄斩，——嚓！嚓！”63 [Gloss:
The more Ah Q thought about it, the angrier he grew, and he was resentful. “So no
rebellion for me, only for you, eh?” he fumed, nodding furiously. “Fuck your mother,
Bogus Foreign Devil; now you’re a rebel! And your head will be cut off. I’ll turn
informer, then see you dragged off to town to have your head cut off – your whole
family will be executed!”]
The more Ah Q thought on this matter the more incensed he became; finally, unable
to repress the painful resentment that filled his heart, he nodded his head ominously,
saying: “Won’t allow me to join the Revolutionary Movement, eh? Is it only for
you to be one? You rascal, you ‘False Foreigner’ – fine, be a Revolutionist! Being
one makes you subject to the penalty of decapitation. I must make a petition and
see that you are dragged into the yamen to have your head cut off, – your whole

60
Zhou Zuoren, Lu Xun xiaoshuo li de renwu, 89–90.
61
Lu Xun, A Q zhengzhuan, 532.
62
Idem, The True Story of Ah Q, 46.
63
Idem, A Q zhengzhuan, 547.

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family’s heads cut off, – chit! chit!” With such resentment filling his heart, Ah Q
gradually snored off.64

In the above, the italicized parts are inserted into the text by the translator,
presumably to bring the chapter to a natural conclusion or to provide a necessary
link to the following chapter. As will be discussed later, these additions reflect
Leung’s poetics.
Alteration can take various forms, but here only those strategies adopted by Leung
to treat sex-related swearwords are discussed. A profusion of bawdy swearwords
and expressions are used in A Q Zhengzhuan. They befit the peasant characters,
particularly the protagonist Ah Q, and therefore contribute to characterization.
However, translating such language can be a subtle problem as there are often
aesthetic, cultural, pragmatic and ideological considerations involved. According
to Santaemilia, when treating sex-related language, “translators tend to censor
themselves – either voluntarily or involuntarily – in order to produce rewritings
which are ‘acceptable’ from both social and personal perspectives.”65 That is,
translators tend to “soften or downplay sexual references.”66 And the least obvious
types of self-censorship are partial translation, minimization or omission of sex-
related terms.67
Interestingly, Leung tends to “censor himself” when treating sex-related
swearwords in the original. Take as an example the sexually suggestive oath tama
de 他妈的 or its variants mama de 妈妈的 and nide mama de 你的妈妈的, all of
which mean literally “Your mother’s!” Characterized as “the national swearword”
by Lu Xun,68 it is the commonest oath in China. According to Snow, it literally
means “I have ravished your mother,” and its variations are “more complex, yet
simpler, more elegant, yet more vulgar, than the Anglo-Saxon equivalent.”69 The
Chinese oath, however, has much richer connotations than what Snow thinks;
depending on the situation where it is used, it can be rendered as such English
swearwords as “damn you,” “fucking,” “son-of-a-bitch,” “motherfucker.” In the
story the oath appears in nine places as listed below:

(1) “阿Q，你的妈妈的！……你的妈妈的！”70 [Gloss: Ah Q, your mother’s;

your mother’s!]

64
Idem, The True Story of Ah Q, 77–78.
65
Santaemilia, “The Translation of Sex-Related Language,” 227.
66
Idem, “The Translation of Sex, The Sex of Translation,” 121.
67
Idem, “The Translation of Sex-Related Language,” 225.
68
Lu Xun, “Lun tama de” 论“他妈的！”[On “Your mother’s!”], in LXQJ, vol. 1, 245.
69
Snow, Journey to the Beginning, 59.
70
Lu Xun, A Q Zhengzhuan, 528.

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Ah Q, you bad fellow; you rascal!71

(2) 他坐起身，一面说道，“妈妈的……”72 [Gloss: Ah Q sat up and said,
“Mother’s!”]
He sat up, muttering unpleasantly.73
(3) 这委实是一件非常“妈妈的”的事情。74 [For Ah Q, this was really a very
bad thing that he would curse “Mother’s!”]
and that was an unusually terrible state of affairs.75
(4) “记着罢，妈妈的……”阿Q回过头去说。76 [Gloss: “Mother’s, just you
wait,” shouted Ah Q over his shoulder.]
“Remember this, you – ” spurted Ah Q, turning back his head.77
(5) “妈妈的，记着罢……”小D也回过头来说。78 [Gloss: “Mother’s, just you
wait,” Young D shouted back, also over his shoulder.]
“You – remember this and it will be all right,” sputtered Little D, also turning back
his head.79
(6) 因为这举人老爷实在太“妈妈的”了。80 [Gloss: because according to Ah Q
that successful provincial candidate was really “a son of a bitch.”]
… because this Chü-jen Lao-yeh was really too hateful.81
(7) 阿Q想，“革这伙妈妈的的命，…”82 [Gloss: “Finish off the whole lot of
them, Mother’s!” thought Ah Q to himself.]
“Cut off the lives of the whole village …”83
(8) “…妈妈的假洋鬼子，…”84 [Gloss: “Fuck your mother, you Bogus Foreign
Devil!”]
“You rascal, you ‘False Foreigner’”85

In Examples (4) (5) (7), the Chinese national swearword is simply omitted
while in the other instances its vulgarity is either softened (“you bad fellow”; “you

71
Idem, The True Story of Ah Q, 35.
72
Idem, A Q Zhengzhuan, 529.
73
Idem, The True Story of Ah Q, 38.
74
Idem, A Q Zhengzhuan, 529.
75
Idem, The True Story of Ah Q, 39.
76
Idem, A Q Zhengzhuan, 530.
77
Idem, The True Story of Ah Q, 42.
78
Idem, A Q Zhengzhuan, 530.
79
Idem, The True Story of Ah Q, 42.
80
Idem, A Q Zhengzhuan, 534.
81
Idem, The True Story of Ah Q, 49.
82
Idem, A Q Zhengzhuan, 538.
83
Idem, The True Story of Ah Q, 60.
84
Idem, A Q Zhengzhuan, 547.
85
Idem, The True Story of Ah Q, 78.

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rascal”) or minimized (“muttering unpleasantly”; “an unusually terrible state of

affairs”; “too hateful”). In fact, even vaguely bawdy language is unacceptable to
Leung. For example, after Ah Q’s sexual longings have been stirred after having
touched the nun’s scalp and cheek, he makes an indecent proposal to Amah Wu.
He throws himself at her feet and pleads, Wo he ni kunjiao “我和你困觉,我
和你困觉!” [Sleep with me!].86 Despite its vulgarity, kunjiao 困觉 [to sleep]
is the right word for illiterate and uncultured Ah Q. Leung, however, finds it
objectionable and modifies the original sentence to “Will you… will you…?”87
The crudity of kunjiao is weakened to the effect that the English reader may be
puzzled about what Ah Q wants to do to the woman. Leung’s tendency to soften
or purify sex-related terms significantly alters Lu Xun’s characterization and
authorial intentions, and English readers experience a much “cleaner” fictional
world of Lu Xun’s than do Chinese readers.
In conclusion, given his literalistic approach, Leung’s version leans towards
the pole of adequacy while its acceptability is very low owing to its awkward and
stiff English. Meanwhile, Leung took liberties with certain portions of the Chinese
original which he deemed ideologically (e.g., the lice-catching competition
episode) or aesthetically unacceptable (e.g., bawdy language), or poetically
imperfect (e.g., the two end-of-chapter additions). Therefore, Leung’s attitude
towards his work was actually not “very serious and earnest” as Lu Xun thought.
The possible reasons for this interesting juxtaposition of overall literalness and
occasional license in Leung’s version are discussed below.

V. LEUNG’S VERSION EXPLAINED

As analyzed above, Leung’s version leans towards the pole of adequacy owing
to the literalistic approach he adopted. Yet occasionally Leung also took liberties
with the original by addition, omission and alteration. Through contextualizing
Leung’s translation, we can see that the shape of his translation was largely
determined by the socio-political factors internal to Chinese culture at the time of
translation as well as by Leung’s personal ideology, poetics and aesthetics.
Several socio-cultural factors influenced Leung’s literal approach to translation.
Firstly, the publisher’s publishing priority and the intended readership were
arguably the most important ones. Given the fact that Leung’s first translation
The Lone Swan was published by the Commercial Press, it was very likely that
the same publisher commissioned him to translate A Q Zhengzhuan. Since its

86
Idem, A Q Zhengzhuan, 526.
87
Idem, The True Story of Ah Q, 32.

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founding in 1897, the Commercial Press has been China’s major publisher of
textbooks, dictionaries and pedagogical texts. Naturally, English translations of
Chinese literature it brought out mainly served as pedagogical texts for domestic
readers. This is corroborated by Leung’s justification of his literalism: “The
translator has followed the Chinese text as carefully as the differences of the two
languages permit, realizing that many people would wish to compare the English
with the original Chinese.”88 Accordingly, Leung’s translation was primarily
targeted at Chinese learners of English, though undoubtedly the publisher also
had a small expatriate audience in mind. To meet the needs of language learners,
both the publisher and the translator might have decided that the English version
should stay close to the Chinese text as much as possible.
Secondly, the dominant translation norm at that time and Lu Xun’s advocacy
of literal translation as well as his literary fame might have compelled Leung
to translate with great caution. According to Pollard, before 1911 there was
already a school of Chinese translators who practiced literal translation.89 With
the inception of the New Literature Movement in 1917, extreme liberalism was
reviled and literal translation began to hold sway. Mao Dun 茅盾 notes that
literal translation became the dominant translation norm after the May Fourth
Movement started in 1919.90 Lu Xun, who first followed the liberalist school
but from 1909 onward switched to the literalist, played a significant part in a
turn of the tide. Chang observes that Lu Xun’s advocacy of “faithfulness rather
than smoothness” and yingyi 硬译 [rigidly literal translation] exerted such a great
influence on Chinese leftist discourse on translation that “in a sense faithfulness
to the original has always been the overriding criterion from Lu Xun to the present
day.”91 It should be noted that the translation norm of adequacy dominant in the
1920s applied to translations into Chinese. Yet although Leung translated out
of Chinese, he was well aware that his translation would be published in China
and would be expected to conform to the dominant translation norm (i.e., literal
translation) in China, failing which his translation would be subjected to harsh
criticism from Chinese reviewers. Accordingly, for safety’s sake Leung chose to
adopt a literalistic approach. Meanwhile, the circumstance of Leung’s sending
his translation to Lu Xun for perusal dictated that his rendering had to keep close
to the original. Leung knew well that Lu Xun fervently advocated literalism
in translation and would not tolerate a translator taking liberties with his own
work. If Leung had followed the liberalist path, his translation would have been

88
Leung, “Preface,” in The True Story of Ah Q, v.
89
Pollard, “Introduction,” in Translation and Creation, 11–13.
90
Mao Dun, “Zhiyi, shunyi, waiyi,” 351.
91
Chang, “Faithfulness, Manipulation, and Ideology,” 248–49.

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censured as “distorting the original” and rejected by Lu Xun. Lim also suggests
that Leung’s literalistic approach to translation might have been influenced by
Lu Xun’s advocacy of “rigidly literal translation” in their correspondence.92
Moreover, Leung can be classed as the “faithful translator” who “translates the
way he does out of reverence for the cultural prestige the original has acquired.”93
Accordingly, Lu Xun’s literary fame and the prestige his novella enjoyed in
the Chinese literary field in the 1920s could have pressurized Leung to adopt
a literalist approach, especially because his translation was to be published in
China.
As analyzed in Section IV, in certain cases Leung made addition, omission
and alteration to the original text despite his literalistic approach. Such are typical
cases where “if linguistic considerations enter into conflict with considerations
of an ideological and/or poetological nature, the latter tend to win out.”94 It can
be argued that such details of textual manipulation both embody and reveal the
translator’s (and his patron’s) ideology, poetics and aesthetics.
The excision of the louse-catching episode is a typical case where ideological
considerations prevail over linguistic ones. And in Leung’s case, the ideological
consideration may have been shared by the translator and the publisher. Bai
observes that “it is important to distinguish the extent to which the ideology
contained in the translation is the translator’s or the patron’s.”95 However, where
the translator and the publisher had the same cultural agenda, they could agree on
ideological issues. In Lefevere’s theoretical framework, the notion of ideology
is used in a broad sense, not limited to the political sphere. Lefevere borrows
Fredric Jameson’s broad definition: “Ideology would seem to be that grillwork of
form, convention, and belief which orders our actions.”96 According to Lefevere,
the patron is usually concerned with the ideology of literature, and the ideological
component of patronage often acts as a “constraint on the choice and development
of both form and subject matter.”97 As analyzed above, the louse-catching episode
embodies Lu Xun’s sarcastic critique of the negative aspects of the Chinese
national character, i.e., a penchant for self-deluding rationalizations which can
turn the culturally dishonorable into the culturally honorable and, by extension,
literal defeat into “spiritual victory.” However, this central theme of Lu Xun’s
work, as already mentioned above, may have escaped Leung’s notice. Moreover,

92
Lim Buan Chay, “A Q Zhengzhuan sanzhong yingyi de bijiao,” 6.
93
Lefevere, Translation, Rewriting, and the Manipulation of Literary Fame, 49–50.
94
Ibid., 39.
95
Bai, “Translator’s Ideology, Dominant Ideology and the Use of Pseudonym,” 544.
96
Lefevere, Translation, Rewriting, and the Manipulation of Literary Fame, 14–16.
97
Ibid., 15–16.

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for a Chinese-American who could afford a decent life, the image of lice living
on the human body, which is faithfully represented by Lu Xun, and the act of
catching and biting them could be offensive, if not repulsive. Since the subject
matter conflicted with Leung’s ideology, he may have decided on his own part to
cut out the louse-catching passage. Meanwhile, the Chinese publisher may have
found the culturally dishonorable episode inappropriate for the Western reader.
While the lice-catching competition between Ah Q and Wang Hu is artistically
exaggerated, it is true that lice used to live on the bodies of poor people leading
a wretched existence. According to Xu Qinwen 许钦文, at the time of Lu Xun’s
writing his novella, it was generally held that “domestic shame should not be made
public,” but Lu Xun went against the tide and “boldly exposed the defects of the
Chinese national character by depicting the louse-catching scene.”98 Accordingly,
this shameful fact of modern Chinese life may have been unacceptable to the
publisher. For fear that the book, if read by foreigners, would cause a loss of
national face, the publisher may have asked the editor or the translator himself to
expurgate the lice-catching passage. Finally, there was even a third possibility:
since both parties found the episode culturally dishonorable, an agreement may
have been reached between the translator and the publisher to remove it in the
translation.
Poetics consists of “an inventory of literary devices, genres, motifs,
prototypical characters and situations, and symbols.”99 Since the patron tends to
relegate authority to the translator where poetics is concerned,100 the translator’s
poetics is often embodied in the textual details of manipulation. For example, if
the translator finds that the narrative mode of the original does not agree with
their poetics, they may make additions, omissions or alterations. Structurally,
A Q Zhengzhuan retains much of the traditional Chinese zhanghui xiaoshuo 章
回小说 [serially chaptered novel] in that it is told by a story-teller in episodes
with chapter headings.101 But it is not a typical zhanghui novel owing to, among
other things, the absence of versified chapter endings. Trained in classical literary
Chinese, Leung was presumably familiar with classical Chinese novels. When he
saw a chapter end without a typical chapter ending, he would feel that something
was missing there and would therefore put into the text what is not there but
he thought should have been there. Hence, each addition inserted at the end of
Chapters V and VIII reflects the translator’s poetical consideration: Leung tried
to intervene in the narrative to direct the progress of the story (the first instance)

98
Xu Qinwen, Nahan fenxi, 62.
99
Lefevere, Translation, Rewriting, and the Manipulation of Literary Fame, 26.
100
Ibid., 15.
101
Lyell, Lu Hsün’s Vision of Reality, 286–87.

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or to express judgments (the second instance).102 That is, he intentionally made

some subtle improvements to these supposed defects.
Lefevere observes that “the faithful translator tends to be conservative in both
ideological and poetical terms.”103 Leung is a case in point. He chose to soften or
purify bawdy language in the Chinese original out of his poetical and aesthetic
considerations. As a man of refined tastes, Leung may have found dirty language
in conflict with the aesthetic to which he was faithful. Meanwhile, while Lu Xun
used bawdy language as a stylistic device for characterization, Leung may have
regarded it as poetically undesirable. Consequently, he chose to sterilize such
offensive language by removing or softening their sexual implications.

VI. RECEPTION OF LEUNG’S VERSION

At this distance it is impossible to establish exactly the circulation and reception

of Leung’s translation. Details of book sales, reprints and circulation figures
are all sketchy. Still, we know that the book had a reasonably large circulation,
for it went through several reprints, including the 1927 and 1929 editions of
the Commercial Press. In 1933 a revised edition was brought out by the same
publisher and was reprinted in 1936 and 1946. It was also reprinted in 1946 in
a bilingual volume edited by Zhao Jingshen 赵景深.104 In 1949, the Shanghai-
based Jiliu Bookstore 激流书店 published a Chinese-English edition, which was
subsequently pirated in Hong Kong. Nevertheless, this made Leung’s version
available in Hong Kong, then a British colony with a fairly large English-reading
population. In the 1950s, however, Leung’s version was superseded by the more
faithful and fluent version of Yang Xianyi 杨宪益 and Gladys Yang. The latter
was first published in 1953 by the Beijing-based Foreign Languages Press.
Based on six book reviews, we try to gauge the evaluation and reception of
Leung’s translation in its time. Three of them are in Chinese, written by bilingual
Chinese critics. The other three are in English, all penned by foreign nationals
residing then in China. It is not clear whether they knew Chinese or not. Lacy
reviews in the Chinese Recorder, the Shanghai-based American missionary
journal:

102
In a typical zhanghui novel, the story-teller intervenes freely in his narrative to express
judgments and direct the progress of the story. The reader is constantly reminded that the story-
teller is in control. Pollard, “Introduction,” in Translation and Creation, 15.
103
Lefevere, Translation, Rewriting, and the Manipulation of Literary Fame, 49–50.
104
Lu Hsun, “The True Story of Ah Q,” in War Cry, 153–301.

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Foreigners in China are pathetically unfamiliar with the literature of the common
people. A survey made of the reading done by them shows that very few are reading
the poetry and fiction that reflect the thoughts and characteristics of the Chinese.
Mr. Leung is doing an incalculable service through his translations. He has been
very successful in preserving quaint idiom without burlesquing it, and even in
carrying over much of the humor with which Chinese literature abounds.105

According to Lacy, Lu Xun’s “quaint idiom” and much of his “humor” are
successfully preserved and conveyed in Leung’s version. Noting that Leung has
done “an incalculable service,” Lacy does not take issue with Leung’s literalistic
approach to translation, and gives no comments on whether Leung’s English
reads well or not.
Sowerby observes that Leung “has managed to render the (original) style into
English without losing any of its freshness and originality.” He also expresses
hope that “more of this sort of thing” will be made available to foreign readers
in China.106 Sowerby does not take exception to Leung’s literalistic rendering,
either. Rather, he suggests that such an approach can help retain the original style.
Danton notes that Leung “has attempted a faithful version” which brings about
some “rough spots.” Interestingly, Danton tries to justify the translation problem.
He argues that it is not the style of the story, but its subject matter, that makes
Leung’s translation important. According to him, the Chinese vernacular is not
yet mature enough to serve as a “medium of elegant literary expression,” and its
present structure is “loose and even formless.” Consequently, “any translation [of
the vernacular literature] is bound to seem somewhat thin” and the “rough spots”
in Leung’s version may be, to some extent, attributed to the inelegant vernacular
in which the original story is written.107
Taken together, the three reviewers welcomed Leung’s translation and
acknowledged his contribution to helping foreign residents in China understand
modern Chinese life and thoughts through Lu Xun’s novella. Yet while hailing
Leung’s faithful translation, they ignored or tried to downplay the fact that
Leung’s English is embarrassingly stiff and awkward, which should have affected
its reception by those foreign readers.
An unidentified Chinese reviewer notes briefly in Ta Kung Pao 大公报, a
most influential Chinese-language newspaper in the Republican period: “Leung’s
version is a complete translation that stays close to the original. But it is so wordy
and verbose that the original style of compactness and flexibility is completely

105
Lacy, “Review of The True Story of Ah Q,” 66.
106
Sowerby, “Review of The True Story of Ah Q,” 311–12.
107
Danton, “A Chinese Story,” 532.

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lost.”108 Xi Di 西谛 (penname of Zheng Zhenduo 郑振铎) comments more

subtly, “The quality of Leung’s translation is actually not bad. Unfortunately, A Q
Zhengzhuan is so hard to translate that many unique colloquialisms and some of
the best passages in the original are not rendered into beautiful English.”109 Zheng
noted that Leung had failed to render the original dialogue into smooth and elegant
English, but he did not specify which passages are not translated well enough.
Was he hinting at the louse-catching passage removed or the bawdy language
sterilized by Leung? No one knows. Yet even if Zheng noticed the liberties which
Leung had taken with the original, he may have refrained from pointing them out
because Zheng was then an editor at the Commercial Press.110 For the sake of the
publisher’s commercial interest, he might have avoided making straightforward
comments, which would have affected book sales.
A detailed review comes from Gan Ren 甘人 (penname of Bao Wenwei 鲍文
蔚), who adopted an evenhanded approach to translation criticism. Bao points out
that except for some liberties taken with the Chinese original, Leung did translate,
overall, in a “very serious and earnest” manner as was noted by Lu Xun, “but it
is precisely because the translation appears slightly too serious and earnest that it
is unfortunately rather stiff and unnatural.” According to Bao, Leung’s literalistic
approach to translation was a strategic mistake since it would not work well with
either foreign residents in China or domestic readers:

If Leung’s translation is intended for foreigners, which should be the case, then
they perhaps cannot understand it as his English is so stiff and stilted. Even if they
can, they will surely get bored, and that is tantamount to not reading it. Then let’s
say that it is intended for Chinese students to learn English. But pidgin English
is the commonest problem among today’s Chinese learners of English. Reading
this book, I am afraid, will only aggravate the problem of pidgin English. Finally,
according to the translator himself, his English text is to be read against the Chinese,
but just think what a job he has done!111

For both Bao and the unidentified reviewer, a translation should stay close
to its original and it is the translator’s duty to handle their work in a serious
and earnest manner. The criteria of translation they had in mind when evaluating
Leung’s translation can support our observation that literal translation was the
dominant translation norm in 1920s’ China. However, as a translation exists to be

108
Yi, “A Q Zhengzhuan zhi yiben,” in A Q qishi nian, 445.
109
Xi Di, “Nahan,” in A Q qishi nian, 67.
110
Ge Baoquan, A Q Zhengzhuan zai guowai, 25.
111
Gan Ren, “A Q Zhengzhuan de ying yiben,” 263–71.

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read, literalness should not, at any rate, be pursued at the cost of smoothness and
fluency. That was why Leung’s version was criticized explicitly or implicitly by
the Chinese reviewers, including even Zheng Zhenduo.
In conclusion, Leung’s basically faithful translation was generally applauded
by the foreign reviewers who acknowledged his contribution to helping foreign
nationals in China understand modern Chinese life and thoughts through Lu
Xun’s novella. The Chinese reviewers, however, criticized Leung’s literalistic
approach to translation, which according to them would mar its readability. One
of them even claimed that Leung’s embrace of literalism would cost him both a
small foreign readership and a large domestic audience. Despite mixed critical
reactions, Leung’s version is of historical significance, not merely because it is
the first English version of A Q Zhengzhuan, but also because with a fairly large
circulation it helped earn Lu Xun an early international literary fame. According
to Chi-Chen Wang, before 1930 Lu Xun was already known to Western readers
through both the French and English versions of A Q Zhengzhuan.112 In the wake
of such international recognition, Lu Xun was allegedly nominated for the Nobel
Prize in literature in 1927.113 Notwithstanding the unverified “rumor,”114 Leung
occupies a prominent place in the history of source culture-initiated foreign-
language translation of Chinese literature during the Republican period.

VII. CONCLUSION

The emergence in Republican China of a sub-field of source culture-initiated

foreign-language translations of Chinese literature is a significant socio-cultural
event, which challenges the generally held assumption that “translations are facts
of target cultures.” Several socio-cultural factors – an urge felt by Western-trained
modern Chinese intellectuals to advance the agenda of internationalism, a niche
market for such translations, a booming foreign-language periodical publishing
industry in Chinese treaty-port cities, and the availability of a cohort of competent
translators (both Chinese and foreign nationals) – contributed to its emergence.
By nature a sub-field of restricted production in the Bourdieusian sense, it
operated on the basis of the accumulation of symbolic capital in the Chinese
context. George Kin Leung is indisputably an important agent in the dynamics of
this sub-field, though his contribution has hitherto been underestimated.

112
Wang, “Lusin: A Chronological Record 1881–1936,” 121. For a detailed study of Jing’s French
version, see Baorong Wang, Lu Xun’s Fiction in English Translation: The Early Years, 60–91.
113
Kowallis, The Lyrical Lu Xun, 3.
114
Gao Jianping, “Lu Xun: Cong wangshang pingxuan shuo kaiqu,” 124.

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Leung became the first English translator of A Q Zhengzhuan partly due to

the unavailability of willing and competent Anglophone translators at that time.
Meanwhile, Leung chose to undertake the work because it could help him
accumulate symbolic capital in the historical field by means of his expertise
in the English language. Overall, Leung adopted a literalistic approach to
translation. Consequently, his translation leans towards the pole of adequacy
while its acceptability is very low owing to its awkward and stiff English.
However, Leung also took liberties with certain portions of the Chinese original.
A tentative explanation of Leung’s translatorial decisions was sought through a
contextualization of these findings inspired by Lefevere’s theory of rewriting.
The textual analysis was juxtaposed with a reconstruction of the specific socio-
cultural context and circumstances in which Leung’s translation was produced
and circulated. With regard to Leung’s literalistic approach to translation, the
possibility was entertained that the Commercial Press’s publishing priority of
turning Chinese-English literary translations into instructional material and the
intended primary readership (i.e., Chinese learners of English) largely dictated
Leung’s overall approach. Meanwhile, the norm of literal translation that began
to hold sway then and Lu Xun’s advocacy of literal translation as well as his
literary fame may also have compelled Leung to translate with great caution. This
constraint became more tangible for Leung as he sent his translation to Lu Xun
for perusal before publication. As for the liberties Leung took with the original
text, explanations were sought with reference to the translator’s (and his patron’s)
ideology, poetics and aesthetics. The lice-catching competition episode is heavily
bowdlerized presumably because both the publisher and the translator deemed
it ideologically unacceptable or culturally dishonorable; bawdy language is
softened or purified because Leung may have found it aesthetically unacceptable;
and the two end-of-chapter additions may have arisen from Leung’s poetical
consideration.
In Republican China, source culture-initiated foreign-language translations of
Chinese literature were often produced, as this case study has demonstrated, to
accumulate symbolic capital and/or to seek cultural honor (as in the case of some
native Chinese translators) in the Chinese socio-political fields. It is hoped that
this case study will prompt further investigations of this interesting translation
phenomenon which should not be unique only to China.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The research work of this paper is supported by the PRC’s National Fund for Research in Social
Sciences, the research project (No. 15BYY034) being entitled “Fanyi shehuixue shiyu xia
Zhongguo xiandangdai xiaoshuo yijie moshi yanjiu” 翻译社会学视阈下中国现当代小说译介模
式研究 [A Study of Translation Modes of Modern Chinese Fiction in the Light of the Sociology of
Translation]. I would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments
and suggestions.

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