Translation and English in twentieth-century China

EVA HUNG*

ABSTRACT: Twentieth century China saw unprecedented attempts at cultural change and rejuvenation through the transfer of foreign knowledge, and translation played a role in almost all aspects of this development. Except for a short period under the PRC, English was the dominant source language for this transfer. This paper gives a brief historical background to the causes for the emergence of translation as a key to national survival and cultural change. It then focuses on three of the most significant translationrelated phenomena in twentieth-century China: (1) the role of fiction translation (and later literary translation) as a vehicle for cultural change and construction; (2) the phenomenon of translating out of the mother tongue, i.e. Chinese, into English; and (3) the relationship between translation and learning English.

INTRODUCTION

The twentieth century was for China one of turmoil and hope, of destruction and regeneration. It saw violent and repeated changes in her political, social and cultural systems. As a result, traditional norms were nullified, and new patterns and modes of operation came in to fill the void. It was under such circumstances that translation gained the attention of the intellectual vanguard and, for the first time in Chinese history, was thrust into the ideological centre-stage. To understand the significance of the emergence of translation as a cultural tool, we need to know something about China's traditional attitude towards foreign cultures as well as the way translation work had been done until the late nineteenth century. China had always maintained a sense of cultural superiority, which was reinforced by the fact that though her rival states through history sometimes overwhelmed her militarily, they in their victory often adopted Chinese culture as their own.1 This sense of superiority meant that the Chinese intellectual mainstream, represented by members of and aspirants to the scholar-official class, never showed much interest in other languages and cultures.2 It was not unusual for the government to rely on people of non-Han origins to cater to its translation needs: in the Han dynasty (206 bc220 ad) much of the diplomatic translation work was handled by the tribute states of the Western Region (present-day Xinjiang province), while the Tang (618907) government employed immigrants of Turkic and Scythian origin from the Western Region as translators. The reliance on foreign talent and initiative is particularly obvious when large-scale cultural transfer was involved. The most representative case was the Buddhist sutra translation movement (second century to eleventh century), in which the majority of the leading participants were non-Chinese.3 When an obvious need for cultural transfer arose again in the late sixteenth century, the linguistic and cultural knowledge of Jesuit missionaries was called upon.4 As with sutra translation, the Jesuits worked collaboratively with Chinese members of an ad hoc
* Research Centre for Translation, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, N.T. Hong Kong. E-mail: evahung@cuhk.edu.hk
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translation team in which the person with bilingual knowledge and foreign cultural expertise was always non-Chinese. When Chinese intellectuals were first exposed to Western knowledge in the nineteenth century, this traditional mode of collaborative translation was still in force. Protestant missionaries who went to China in the mid-nineteenth century founded printing presses and journals which introduced Western knowledge to Chinese readers. They all worked collaboratively with Chinese assistants or co-translators. As in times of old, the missionaries were those with the cultural and bilingual knowledge. However, this situation began to change in the late nineteenth century, when a new generation of Chinese intellectuals became keenly interested in foreign knowledge. The roots of such changes lay in China's repeated military defeat in the second half of the nineteenth century, at the hands first of the Western powers and then Japan. The shock and humiliation led to intense self-questioning and the search for a means of national survival and regeneration. In their quest, reformist officials and intellectuals turned first to a range of Western knowledge, concentrating on topics related to military prowess, but also covering others such as geography, social sciences, natural sciences, medicine, agricultural studies, engineering, mining, mathematics, trade, and international law.5 This quest was accepted by the Qing government as part of its efforts to fend off foreign encroachment, and translations of works from the West done by the government-funded Translation Bureau at the Jiangnan Arsenal, which employed notable Westerners such as John Fryer (18391928) to head its work, had a considerable impact on broadening the horizons of a new generation. Measures were also taken to nurture local Chinese bilingual translators. This gave rise to a new mode of practice in translation. Yan Fu (18541921), the translator of the immensely influential Tianyan lun (Thomas Huxley's Evolution and Ethics), was the first of a new breed of cultural translators he was bilingual and worked alone.6 The inroad that Western knowledge made in the progressive circles in China in this period was to lead ultimately to the emergence of a new Chinese culture.

NEW FICTION AND THE RISE OF TRANSLATION

The end of the nineteenth century marked a critical juncture in the Chinese reform movement. In 1898, the Chinese intellectual vanguard's hope of initiating reform within the existing government was wrecked by the conservative triumph in the palace coup. This coup turned the reform-minded young Emperor into a virtual prisoner, and restored power to the Empress Dowager Cixi. The intellectuals behind the Emperor's reforms were either executed or exiled. Barred from the possibility of creating change within government circles, Liang Qichao (18731929), one of the younger reform leaders, directed his energy towards generating support among the public. One of his most important vehicles was the New Fiction movement which elevated fiction from its traditionally low status by assigning it a part in the script for national revival.7 The choice of fiction over other literary genres was entirely utilitarian. Unlike the genres that were highly respected in China's classical tradition but were elitist in nature, fiction could appeal to a mass readership. Moreover, according to its new champions in China, the efficacy of fiction as a vehicle for social reform had already been proven in the West. The following statement bears witness to this line of thinking among late Qing intellectuals:
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Fiction's influence on men and its popularity far surpass the classics and histories. It therefore has a hold on the thoughts and customs of the people . . . We have also heard that fiction had helped to civilize Europe, America and Japan. (Yan and Xia, 1897, cited in Ying 1960: 1)

At the turn of the twentieth century, with the New Fiction movement well on its way, fiction translation was billed as an ideal tool for national regeneration. Since the general population was to be re-educated through this reinvented genre, it was important to ensure a supply of `instruction material'. And given the emphasis on modern Western knowledge, it was difficult to create from scratch the necessary mass of material within a short time. Translation thus became the logical solution. Besides being a quick source of `instruction material', translated works also served as a model for creative writers to familiarize themselves with new subject matter and ways of writing. For the first few years of the twentieth century, fiction translations outnumbered works written in Chinese.8 The fiction translation movement also speeded up the changes in the way translation work was done. The huge demand for translated fiction led to the quick emergence of a large number of bilingual Chinese translators working on their own. Fiction translators were not just participating in the worthwhile cause of national self-strengthening; they were working for financial gain as well. The nature of popular literature meant that its translator community had to be large, flexible, productive, and thoroughly at home with Chinese language and culture requirements which differed significantly from those for the technology- and knowledge-based reforms of the nineteenth century. The technical, philosophical and cultural expertise which marked the cultural transfer of an earlier era became far less pertinent, while good writing skills in Chinese rose in importance. Thus the leading role played by non-Chinese translators was eliminated in this process of change.
POPULARIZATION, ENLIGHTENMENT, PROPAGANDA

The serious purpose which translated fiction was to serve did not mean that the majority of Chinese readers in the early twentieth century became avid consumers of `serious' Western literature; quite the contrary. Since fiction was to appeal to a mass readership, popularization was the primary target. The booming publishing scene, fuelled by new city economies such as Shanghai, also created a clear demand for fiction with entertainment value. A good indication of this trend was the sub-genres which dominated the fiction scene: detective stories, adventure and romance. In the first two decades of the twentieth century, Arthur Conan Doyle (18591930) was the most translated foreign writer in China. This decisive trend towards popularization might have made some critics uneasy, but it was also a clear indicator of the acceptance translated fiction had among a growing Chinese readership.9 Even at this early stage, English was the leading source language for translations; English versions of books from other languages also served as the basis for Chinese translation. The rival use of Japanese translations of Western fiction as an intermediary for a time an easy and popular option because Japanese texts contained a large number of Chinese characters steadily declined in prestige and importance. Of the book-length translated fiction published in this period, English language titles amounted to 47 per cent of the total output.10 But by now another wave of change was gathering. The May Fourth Movement (1919), started as a political campaign against the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, led eventually
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to a revolution in terms of language as well as culture. In the third decade of the twentieth century, China officially discarded classical Chinese and adopted baihua as the national language. The leaders of this movement, many of whom were educated in the West, also set about to create a new literary tradition largely modelled on the various genres of Western literature. While translation still played an important role in this process, its orientation was markedly different from that of previous decades. Instead of popular literature, now the emphasis was on Western canonical work and writings that would improve society, and instead of classical Chinese, translations were made into baihua, the new written language based on the spoken language of northern China centred around the Beijing-Tianjin area. All the leading men of letters of the New Culture movement Hu Shi (18911962), Lu Xun (18811936), Zhou Zuoren (18851967), Xu Zhimo (18961931) among them engaged in literary translation as a means to develop the fledgling baihua literature. To them foreign models provided support and reference points on at least three different levels. First, the cultural battle was newly won and the viability and authority of the new norms had to be reinforced. Since the need to import Western knowledge had by now achieved national recognition, the introduction of representative works from the Western literary tradition was seen as the most efficacious way to reinforce the message of authority and viability. Second, since China was to discard her traditional literary models in favour of new ones that would suit a modern society, it was essential for writers and readers alike to familiarize themselves with Western literary genres the novel, the short story, the essay and various forms of poetry which would become the foundation of the new tradition. And what better way to do this than establishing direct contact through translation? For creative writers, translation was also an ideal way of exploring Western literary forms and techniques in depth. Third, as the newly adopted baihua was still in its infancy as a literary language, writers and intellectuals were keenly aware of the need to develop and fine-tune the language itself; some were also conscious of the opportunity to guide the language to develop in a certain way. For them, translation was a vehicle not only for importing new literary forms, ideas and practices, it was also a vehicle for importing new vocabulary and syntax. Lu Xun, who as a matured writer adhered to a principle of extreme literalness in his translation work, best exemplified this kind of thinking. For him, whether the translated work was readily accessible to the average Chinese reader was not of primary importance; he was more concerned with introducing new linguistic elements which would improve the Chinese language, particularly in terms of logical thinking.11 The literary organizations of the period also reflected the above views. The leading literary groups such as The Literary Association and the Creation Society were all involved in translation work.12 Despite their differences in ideology and literary preference, the general attitude towards translation was still largely utilitarian the elevation of Chinese culture and the reform of Chinese society. The fact that Republican China was plagued internally by warlords and externally by aggressive foreign powers no doubt contributed to the urgency of the utilitarian agenda. It was in relation to the search for a viable political and social model that Marxist theories were imported into China in the 1930s, and the theoretical discourses were complemented by translations of `outstanding proletarian revolutionary work' which had a considerable influence on the intellectual vanguard (Wong, 1991: 73). The utilitarian approach to the translation of literature was continued and strengthened after the founding of the PRC in 1949. As early as 1942, Mao Zedong made it clear in his `Talks at the Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art' that the sole purpose of literature was to
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serve the revolution, and later the `people's dictatorship'.13 Literature and translation both came under the auspices of the government's central propaganda department. As in other walks of life, translators were organized into national and regional associations and assigned to specific posts and duties. This, together with comprehensive government control over all publishing outlets, meant that every step in the translation process from the selection of material to its printing and distribution was under the watchful eye of the government. After the culturally barren years of the Cultural Revolution (196676), the PRC reopened her door to the outside world at the end of the 1970s. Within a decade, the volume of translations of foreign books increased tenfold.14 A partial relaxation in ideological control gave a new generation of intellectuals the opportunity to seek new knowledge. In their endeavour to carry on the spirit of `Enlightenment' initiated during the May Fourth Movement, translation again played a significant role. In the mid 1980s, several book series were launched with the tacit support of reform-minded members of government and the cultural establishment.15 Over one third of the titles in these book series, which played a pivotal role in intellectual exploration and debate in that period, were translated texts. Nor was translation limited to serious intellectual endeavours. After decades of uniformity imposed on her literary scene, Chinese readers were introduced to popular English-language literature in the 1980s through translation. Publishers vied with one another to be the first to market their versions of such bestsellers as Noble House. In a sense one may say that the situation of China in the 1980s had an eerie resemblance to that of the first two decades of the twentieth century, and that in terms of China's cultural self-perception, our story had come full circle. In both periods the Chinese government of the day accepted the reality of her position in the global political and social order, and decided to go on a path of drastic change. Struck by the same realities, the intellectual vanguard worked both within existing structures and tried to push the limits of existing borders to further the speed and extent of cultural transfer. In both cases, such attempts opened Chinese society to new types of books (particularly popular genres) and new ways of operation. And, central to our theme, in both these critical phases of twentieth-century China's cultural development, translation was regarded by the government and as well as the intellectual vanguard as an essential tool.
TRANSLATING INTO ENGLISH

It is a common assumption in the Euro-American translation and interpreting professions that translators should only translate out of a second language into a mother tongue or a mother tongue equivalent.16 In reality, the validity of this assumption is largely limited to a Euro-American context. Many translators in Asian countries find that there is considerable demand for translation into foreign languages, and in practice it is not unusual for Asian translators to translate both into and out of their mother tongues. The blooming English-related translation scene on the Chinese mainland in the last two decades bears witness to the existence of a large number of translators working out of their mother tongue (Chinese) into a second language (English), over which some of them have but a shaky command.17 Commercial translation work In terms of translation work related to international trade (including attempts at all levels of government to attract foreign investment and promote tourism), this situation can
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be accounted for by a combination of practical factors, two of the most obvious being the comparatively low translation fees or wages in China,18 and the scarcity of native-English speakers who have enough Chinese for translation work. There is a clear imbalance between the volume of work to be done and the number of qualified translators to do it. However, the lack of general knowledge of foreign languages in China also contributes to ignorance on the part of the client, many of whom believe that any graduate from an English department must be a translation expert. This illusion is to some extent shared by the translators themselves (many working freelance and part-time). In recent years there has been repeated advocacy for upgrading the standard of translations into foreign languages. (Ai, Lin and Shen, 2000; Lin, 2002; Wei, 2000). While this may contribute to raising awareness of the problem, it is doubtful that advocacy or academic conferences will do much to improve the general standard. As China gains experience in international trade, awareness of the quality of commercial translation work will no doubt increase. This will, hopefully, lead to a natural stratification of translation services whereby quality will be linked to the scale of remuneration. It should also lead to the concept of quality control in translation work. To put it simply, market forces will, over time, play a significant role in restructuring the part of the translation profession that is oriented towards commerce. Cultural self-translation But market forces may not have such a strong role to play in non-commercial translations into English, a type of work of which China produces plenty. One of the new developments in the second half of the twentieth century has been the initiative within Chinese communities to translate Chinese writings into foreign languages. This is a rather unusual phenomenon: the norm for literary translation is for the work to be initiated and published in the target-language country or community. Hence Gideon Toury's comment that translators `operate first and foremost in the interest of the culture into which they are translating' (1995: 12). On the positive side, the exceptional situation in China may be interpreted as a desire on her part to establish a cultural dialogue with other countries. However, her sustained effort at self-translation also has a strong ideological impetus. How much does the existence of rival Chinese communities operating according to different ideological norms (such as Taiwan and Hong Kong) contribute to the impetus to self-translate, and thus impose a particular interpretation of Chinese cultural heritage on the larger world? It is interesting to note that both Taiwan and Hong Kong also engage in some form of cultural self-translation, though the work is not government sponsored.19 According to PRC government records, in its 50-year history, texts amounting to more than a hundred million Chinese characters have been rendered into more than half a dozen foreign languages by the central government translation bureau and the foreign languages bureau. These include, of course, a large amount of writings by several generations of political leaders such as Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, whose complete works have all been translated (Wei, 2000: 6). However, included in this output is also a substantial amount of creative literature. While many countries and communities with an inadequate pool of translators for their language-policy or trade needs do regularly require translators to work into a second language, China is unique in the scale of literary translation done by its citizens working into a non-mother tongue. The literary translation work of the Foreign Languages Bureau and Foreign Languages Press have shown a clear ideological orientation. Writers and
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works selected for translation all served to reinforce the government's world view, which had no room for those considered antagonistic to the regime. Foreign language translation was one way of reinforcing the PRC's official literary canon. The clearest indication of how literary translation was expected to function within this system came during the Cultural Revolution: the quarterly journal Chinese Literature, the literary flagship of the Foreign Languages Press, devoted itself exclusively to slogans gleaned from Chairman Mao's writing and the `literary' output of the worker-peasant-soldier triune.20 The thrust of the PRC's self-translation efforts has always been in English.21 Why? A rather representative mainland Chinese translator justifies the importance given to English in terms of numbers, thus: since a billion people in this world use English, and another billion use Chinese, translation between these two languages is `the most important intercultural communication in the world' (Xu, 1992: 1). What is equally, if not more, important is perhaps the fact that, as the language of the British Empire and the USA, English has been the language of economic, cultural and military dominance since the nineteenth century. During the Cold War, it was also the language of China's arch-enemy. If self-translation is all about cultural image projection, it is natural to try and project one's ideological beliefs into the enemy camp. Equally natural is the attempt to effect that projection in the language of power and prestige. China's government-organized self-translation work is to a considerable extent part of government propaganda. That being the case, the assumed readers of the translated work should be the population of the target language communities. However, there is also current in China a unique situation in which Chinese texts translated into English are aimed primarily at a local Chinese readership. Since 1980, a substantial number of English translations of Chinese literature (especially of classical poetry)22 have been published outside of the domain of the Foreign Languages Press. Though the editors and translators claim that these books are aimed at intercultural communication (i.e. at a readership in the Anglophone world), neither the translation approach nor the actual circulation of these books seems to justify such a claim. The reality indicates that these books are aimed at a local Chinese readership whose purpose is to learn English through translated material. These books are produced by university teachers of English departments in Chinese universities, whose status as foreign language experts is extremely convincing to this readership within China. The fact that many such translations are closely bound by Chinese linguistic and literary norms a fact which largely prevents them from achieving a real dialogue with the target culture may actually be part of their appeal for Chinese readers whose only frame of reference is the Chinese one. Those who aim at learning English through such translations are heartened by the apparent ease with which they are helped to cross the linguistic and cultural divide, not realizing that the crossing is, in many cases, just an illusion. With the size of her population, China does have the critical mass to sustain publications of this type, so source-culture bound translations tailored for local consumption may have considerable staying power. In fact, given the rising popularity of English as the preferred second language, such translations may achieve further quantitative increase.
TRANSLATION AND THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

The phenomenon discussed above reveals that in China there is a strong link between translation and English language learning. In this last section of the paper, we will deal briefly with the teaching of English with emphasis on its translation-related aspects.
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Foreign language instruction was officially introduced into China with the establishment of the Tongwen Guan (College of Translators) in 1862. The college was part of the Office of Foreign Affairs (Zongli Yamen), and its English name is a clear indicator of its main purpose to train Chinese translators and interpreters for the government. English was the first language introduced, followed later by Russian, French, German and Japanese. The college was later reorganized and renamed as Yixue Guan (College of Interpreters). When the Imperial Capital University (forerunner of Peking University) was founded in 1898, the College of Interpreters was incorporated into the new institution. Thus it was that translation became one of the oldest cornerstones of China's first university. The new importance given to foreign languages was also reflected in the salaries and ranking of this new type of translator. While translators who provided services for indigenous national languages (i.e. Chinese, Manchu and Mongolian) were merely clerical officers, the foreign language translators of the Qing started their careers as middleranking officials, and could achieve status and pay equivalent to that of a consul (Hung, 2002). Thus, in the area of government activities, translation also gained recognition which was unparalleled in previous history. Nor was English learning and translation work limited to government initiatives. The flourishing trading ports, especially Shanghai, saw great eagerness to learn a foreign language, the most popular being English. This trend received a dramatic boost when the Qing government decided in 1906 to abandon the civil service examinations in favour of a new education system. Foreign language learning became an integral part of the secondary school syllabus; English was also offered in evening classes by many schools and colleges. Tools for self-learning, such as phrase books and bilingual dictionaries, also played an important part in extending the reach of the English language. The demise of the Manchu dynasty in 1911 speeded up the changes already underway. There was a dramatic increase in new-style schools and universities (many missionaryrun),23 and the teaching of foreign languages became the responsibility of the education sector rather than that of the government. At the same time, the number of Chinese who undertook university or postgraduate studies in the English-speaking world also increased. This situation ensured that there was a pool of eligible potential translators and interpreters to serve the various needs of government and trade. Both in Republican China (founded 1912) and under the PRC (founded 1949), the teaching of translation has been done in foreign languages departments of the universities. Except for a brief period when Russian was, for political reasons, the preferred foreign language,24 the dominance of English has been unrivalled. It is thus not surprising that English departments have played a dominant role in translation instruction. Towards the end of the twentieth century, universities began to offer English instruction for special purposes within newly developed courses such as tourism. The use of translation in the learning process, however, remains intact. If one recalls the expressed purpose for the founding of the College of Translators in 1862, one can see that the role translation plays in foreign language instruction has not changed substantially over a century. Traditionally, translation has served as a tool in foreign language learning both in the West and in China. In recent decades this practice has been under scrutiny and criticism in the West, from the point of view both of foreign language teaching pedagogy and of translation studies. The problem lies in how to differentiate between translation as a tool in linguistic (often vocabulary) acquisition, and translation as a professional or paraprofessional practice which incorporates a large number of non-linguistic factors.
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Though this debate has a certain take-up in China,25 it seems to have had little real impact on established practice and common perception. This is evidenced by the fact that the official foreign languages examinations on the Chinese mainland all have a heavy translation component. The increasing commercial possibilities of English teaching also lend support to this view: World of English one of the most popular English-language teaching magazines published in China26 devotes roughly 90 per cent of its contents to English-Chinese translation material, all printed in bilingual format. This is a clear indication that in China translation is still considered one of the most expedient ways for learning English, and that many university teachers are encouraging this trend through their own work.
CONCLUSION

China's twentieth- century experience shows that translation has been used as a tool by a variety of people to serve a variety of purposes. Trade, diplomacy, reform, revolution, modernization, cultural image construction and foreign language teaching all relied on translation work. In that process, both the Chinese perception of translation and the translators' mode of operation went through dramatic changes. China's many twentiethcentury attempts at cultural transfer also reveal the power relations between preferred source language culture(s) and a target language culture which has a long and proud tradition. Yet what is perhaps most important is the fact that, regardless of changes in government and ideology, twentieth-century China continuously showcased the role translation played in large-scale cultural planning.27 This suggests that any meaningful study of the development of modern Chinese culture should take special note of the part translation played. In this area, the full intellectual potential of translation studies remains to be explored.
NOTES
1. China had repeatedly come under the rule of non-Han houses. Notable examples are the Northern dynasties (386581), Jin (11151234), Yuan (12711386) and Qing (16441911). All these dynasties adopted Chinese culture to a greater or lesser extent. The Toba of Northern Wei were the most eager coverts, renouncing their own family name and language in the year 495. 2. The non-Han dynasties adopted bilingual or multilingual policies out of administrative necessity. However, all the languages involved were considered national languages rather than foreign languages. For details see Hung, 2002. 3. For details see Hung, 1999. 4. By then the Chinese calendar was badly in need of revamping. Both the Ming (13681644) and Qing (1644 1911) governments appointed Jesuit missionaries to the Bureau of Astronomy to supervise this work. 5. For a list of the works translated, see Xiong, 1994: 53850. 6. Educated for two years at the British naval academy at Greenwich, Yan belonged to the first generation of Chinese sent by the Qing government to study in the West. 7. For details see Chen, 1989 and Yuan, 1992. On the reinvention of Chinese literary norms in relation to the New Fiction movement see Hung, 1998a. 8. The period was 19027. Moreover, the proportion of translated work in relation to the total number of fiction publication was very high throughout the first two decades of the twentieth century. For details see Teruo, 1998: 39. 9. Doyle was in fact the first Western writer to have all his major works translated into Chinese within his own lifetime. As a comparison, readers may want to note that a complete translation of Shakespeare's works was not finished until the 1970s. For an analysis of translated popular fiction in the context of the New Fiction movement and early twentieth-century reform, see Hung, 1998b. 10. Based on statistics listed by country of origin of the books (Chen, 1989: 42). Britain, with 293 titles, was at the top of the table; the US ranked fourth with 78 titles. Japan was third with 80.
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For details of Lu Xun's arguments see Wong, 1999: 2269. For more details see Wong, 2002. For an analysis see Hsia, 1968. Statistics show that between 1978 and 1987 more than 5,000 `social sciences' books were translated, ten times the amount of work done in the first three decades of the PRC (Chen, 1994: 1). In China, the term `social sciences' includes all humanities subjects. These include the series `Aesthetics Translation Series' (launched 1982; general editor Li Zehou), `Towards the Future' (launched 1984; general editor Jin Guantao), and `Culture: China and the World Series' (launched 1986; general editor Gan Yang). For details about the nature of these books and their editorial teams' relationship to the authorities, see Chen and Jin, 1997. It would perhaps be more useful to adopt the classifications `A language', `B language' and `C language' used in teaching translation and interpreting. In an age in which cultural identity and linguistic background often have little to do with ethnic origin, the term `mother tongue' is often misleading when applied to the linguistic abilities of members of multicultural or immigrant communities. For some examples of blunders made by translators, see Ai, Lin and Shen, 2000: 23. The remuneration for translation work done on the Chinese mainland is commonly a quarter or a fifth of that charged in Hong Kong. See Hung, 2000 for a discussion on the role self-translation plays in cultural image projection and cultural legitimacy. The flagship translation journal of the Foreign Languages Press Chinese Literature ceased publication in 2001 because it proved financially unviable after it was turned over to an academic publisher. However, the government policy of sponsoring mainland Chinese academics to translate Chinese literature into foreign languages seems to be still in force. Though Chinese Literature had a French edition too, the English edition was always the dominant one both in terms of the quantity of works published and circulation. The literary translation series published by the Foreign Languages Press is predominantly in English. For a detailed study of this type of translations see Hung, 2000. By the end of 1921, there were over 13,500 missionary schools in China. This was the case from the founding of the PRC (1949) to the end of the 1950s, when relations with the Soviet Union soured. See, for example, Shi, 2000. Monthly circulation over 100,000. For a discussion of cultural planning and translation see Toury, 1998.

16.

17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

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