The recent publication of a Chinese translation of The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom, by Simon Winchester (Harper, 2008), is worth noting. While the book portrays Joseph Needham as a womanizer, it also describes the unknown side of the man who documented Chinese science and civilization.
The Needham biography also reveals that the widely reported use of biological weapons during the Korean War was a fabrication. Of course, this is not politically correct from an orthodox Chinese perspective. As the controversy involved Needham, who, invited by the Chinese government as both a biochemist and a friend to investigate the case, sided with the Soviets and Chinese, leaving this part out of the translated version would be awkward.
Liu Dun, a historian of Chinese science with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a friend of mine, was asked to look into the matter, as well as other issues concerning the translation. He came up with a very creative and clever way to circumvent it – adding a translator’s note. The note reads:
The investigations into whether the United States used biological weapons during the Korean War have thus far not reached a consensus. Also, based on most recently classified materials, some scholars have concluded that the United States did use such weapons. See, for example, Stephen Endicot and Edward Hagerman, The United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets from the Early Cold War and Korea (Indianapolis: Indian University Press, 1999).
Many of the foreign-language books about China have not been lucky enough to be fully translated into Chinese, without parts being removed, etc.. Even some of the books covering Chinese science, like the Needham biography, which are not supposed to be sensitive, are just not publishable in China.
In 2005, for example, Harvard University Press published China and Albert Einstein: The Reception of the Physicist and His Theory in China, 1917-1979, by Professor Hu Danian, an ethnic Chinese originally from China and another friend of mine. A year later, he translated and in fact rewrote the book by including newly discovered materials unavailable to him when the English version was being finished.
However, the criticism of Einstein’s theory of relativity during the Cultural Revolution had to be cut, because otherwise it would embarrass those who attacked Einstein, who are still around today and are well-known in China. In the meantime, the name of astrophysicist Fang Lizhi had to be omitted, since he is a dissident. (Lizhi defended Einstein’s theory.)
Professor Oded Shenkar’s book, The Chinese Century: The Rising Chinese Economy and Its Impact on the Global Economy, the Balance of Power, and Your Job (Wharton School Publishing, 2004), is a book that is very positive and upbeat on China’s rise and future. But one chapter is conspicuously missing in the Chinese version, as the translators simply do not agree with the author that China lacks intellectual property rights protection.
Different works by a single author could be treated differently. One example is the books of Iris Chang, a Chinese American writer. Her book, Chang’s Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (Basic Books, 1997) has at least two Chinese translations.
But Chang’s first book, the one which made her famous, Thread of the Silkworm (Basic Books, 1995), is a biography of Chinese rocket scientist Qian Xuesen, known as H.S. Tsien in the United States. Qian contributed to the development of a U.S. rocket program before falling victim to anti-communist McCarthyism. He left the United States and traveled to China, where he became “the father of China’s missile program.”
Qian's experiences in the United States are not known by most Chinese, even by many members of the Chinese scientific community. This information could spoil Qian’s image. The book that should have been translated into Chinese and published on the mainland, but it is not yet available in China’s bookstores. Fortunately, a Chinese version has been published across the Taiwan Strait.
Finally, I have had a similar experience. I wrote China’s Scientific Elite (RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), which is the first book that studies China’s scientific elite, who hold membership in the prestigious Chinese Academy of Sciences. My book concludes that the formation of a scientific elite seems to be universal; the recognition and promotion of scientists in China can be considered independent of political, cultural, and historical fluctuations. While the Chinese scientific community has been vulnerable to the interference from the party-state, it has in some respects resisted government pressures and accorded a higher value to accomplishments in fundamental science than to applied and military research.
Although the book has been recommended for translation and publication in China. Now, more than five years after its English publication, a Chinese version is still not within reach. It is simply because the book discusses the “red versus expert” issue that has frustrated Chinese intellectuals, including scientists, which is inevitable in any study of intellectual life in contemporary China. More problematically, it also details how Fang Lizhi evolved into a dissident from a “red expert,” or an outstanding scientist who also was politically aligned with the Chinese Communist Party.
When first published in 1979, the now well-regarded magazine Dushu (Reading) carried a leading article advocating that there should be no “forbidden zone” in reading. Thirty years later, there seems to be fewer banned books, but restrictions still exist on what books should be translated into Chinese. The question, then, becomes: If there is restriction on translation, how could there be no forbidden zone in reading?
Related Readings:
Barboza, David. "In China, Knockoff Cellphones are a Hit." New York Times. April 27, 2009.
"The Sichuan Earthquake and the Changing Landscape of CSR in China." Knowledge@Wharton, April 20, 2009. |
