“Authoritarianism in Translation”

Evan Osnos of the New Yorker files a piece on the progression of foreign translations in Chinese literary circles. The one-party system in China has a set of restrictions that prohibits certain economic appendages, making China’s seventeen firms involved in literary translations substantially alleviating (the translation firms have increased their share of GDP by ten percent). An excerpt from the article (if only I knew something about custom fields, I could insert a pull quote):

“I mention this not to argue that China is a literary paradise, but rather to point out how inventive and ambitious Chinese translators and publishers have been able to carve out viable space within the restrictions imposed by the one-party state. Go into any large Chinese bookstore and you are likely to see readers sitting in the aisles, scouring foreign books in translation, which they might not be able to afford. “

I’m currently reading ABC of Reading by Ezra Pound. I think he’d be proud to hear these factoids. I’m still not willing to read The Inferno in Italian but the man had a grasp on language that remains unfathomable to me. His collective translations still mean a lot to Chinese literary scholars. This newly discovered procreation is perhaps a product of that very 20th century contribution.