Revista Idiomática

Zhongli Yu is an associate professor of Translation Studies at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. She holds an MSc in Translation Studies from the University of Edinburgh and a Ph.D. in Translation and Intercultural Studies from the University of Manchester. She does research into different topics such as women, gender, feminism, cultural translation, interpreting in war settings, intercultural communication, translation education, comparative literature, and literature studies.

Our Translation Studies subject played a major role in the development of this interview, because it introduced us to different theories and studies. In this subject we were asked to make a research on translation studies we were interested in, and that is how we came across Dr. Zhongli Yu’s work, specifically, her book titled Translating Feminism in China: Gender, Sexuality and Censorship. This book reflects upon the translation of feminism in China through the analysis of the translations of two major feminist works: The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir and The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler.

The main focus of this interview was the seventh chapter of the book, titled Censorship, sexuality, and translation. In this chapter, Zhongli Yu gives a detailed overview on censorship in China.

In this interview we have tried to draw attention to China’s translation studies, because we believe that we have very little knowledge about them in Mexico.

What would you say has been the role of translation in the feminist movement in China?

This is a very interesting question. From my point of view, translation played a very important role in the feminist movement in China, because the outburst of Chinese feminism was accompanied by the translation of western concepts.

During the 20th century there was a movement we call May Fourth Movement. People who initiated this movement thought that the country was weak and that it needed to be strengthened and saved. It was at that moment that a lot of philosophical, technological, and all kinds of western works were imported to China. So, as the various works from the western world started to be imported into China, intellectuals (mainly male ones, at that time women had very little chance to be educated) became aware of the fact that human rights should definitely include women’s rights, and that if they wanted to improve the country the women’s liberation movement had to be included in the May Fourth Movement.

As a result, a lot of things changed in China. For instance, women (and not only women, but young people in general) did not have the right to choose their partner, marriage was arranged by parents, and whether these young people agreed to it or not, they had no other choice but to obey their parents. However, after the women’s liberation movement was introduced in China, some women started to have the right to choose their spouses.

Furthermore, women who came from wealthy families started to go to school and some of them even got the opportunity to study abroad. This situation can be perfectly seen in literary works because many educated women became very famous female writers. In a certain way, they paved the way for the feminist spirit to grow in China. So we could say that this was the very beginning of the feminist movement in China, and this is why I believe that translation played a very important role in the development of this movement.

After the establishment of the People’s Republic in China in 1949, for about 30 years, China was closed to the outside world. Communication with the rest of the world stopped, so during this time, people didn’t really have the chance to read western books. Because China was mostly influenced by the Soviet Union, socialist feminism was practiced. It was believed that women had to be part of the construction of socialism, so feminism was more targeted at making women go out of their home to join the society and take part in constructing this system. The fact that the country needed manpower gave women some sense that they were liberated because they had to work together with men to construct society.

Nonetheless, it was not fair for women, because they did a lot of work, in fact, they did as much work as men, especially in rural areas, where they had to adapt to a male standard of work. During winter, they had to work in the rivers to improve them for farming work and this was especially damaging for their health. Even though they were regarded as “iron girls”, these situations brought a lot of negative consequences for their health.

In the late 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, the reforming era of China started. After 30 years of being closed to the outside world, China finally started to open to it. As I mentioned before, people did not have the opportunity to read western books. Furthermore, during that time the publishing industry was almost destroyed because people spent a lot of time on political movements, so when China started to overlap with the outside world, people were interested in reading books.

In addition, from the late 1970s, China had suffered from various economic flaws, so the government’s opinion was that China needed to change, that it was crucial for them to pay attention to the economic development, and that they needed to open to the outside world. Hence, lots of western books were imported to China in this period. The books that were imported to China had to do with technology, science, literature, and philosophy. It was during this period that a lot of feminist works were introduced to China, one of those feminist books was The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir.

It is important to point out that even though books started to be imported to China, it was hard for publishers to find someone to translate them, so they had to reprint some books that had already been translated in Taiwan. The first version of Simone de Beauvoir’s book (The Second Sex) that was published in China was a reprinted translation from Taiwan.

As a result of the World Conference on Women by the United Nations, which was carried out in 1995 and held in Beijing, The Second Sex was finally translated in China. Since women started to get prepared for this conference, a lot of works regarding women, gender, and feminism were translated in China. Indeed, this helped to make people aware of the situation and position that women held in society. However, in the case of The Second Sex, certain chapters were deleted, especially those regarding topics like prostitution and lesbianism. These topics were unimaginable for Chinese people because, after being closed to the outside world for about 30 years, they had no gender awareness and prostitution was supposed to have been eradicated from the establishment of the People’s Republic in China.

Hence, after the translation of The Second Sex and thanks to the World Conference on Women by the United Nations, Chinese feminism got further development. This conference gave Chinese women an opportunity to communicate, interact, and discuss feminism with women from other parts of the world, so they learned a lot from each other. Of course, feminism on both sides of the world had a different development, but the conference really gave every woman the chance to learn from other women’s experiences.

Finally, I think that translation played a very important role in importing international feminism to China, because it was hard for people, (even nowadays, for Chinese academics) to read in English so they had to rely on Chinese translations.

It is widely known that translation is mostly done by women. However, male translators tend to receive more recognition. What are your thoughts about the role of women in translation fighting for visibility?

That’s right, translation is mostly done by women. I’m sure we can see more women in translation programs nowadays, but it was not that way in the past regarding China. I just said that in the 1920s and 1930s the people who were educated were mostly men, so the majority of translators were men; seldom were women translators. These people grew up during the 1920s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and mostly educated men could study abroad, that’s why most translators at that time were men. With this in mind, we can see why mostly men translators got influence and recognition for their contributions. It was not because women were not recognized, still they got less chances to receive an education abroad so that they could have the ability to translate. Now it is different. More women are adjoining the translation industry. They are very prominent in translation, especially in the interpreting field. In China some women interpreters are very famous and admired by people, they have got a reputation. However, what you are talking about is more suitable to a certain context.

Do you know the feminist translation practice in Canada? Feminist translation series developed from feminist translation practices in Canada. Canada is a bilingual country, so whenever French feminism writers wrote something, translators needed to translate it to English. Feminist translation practices started from then, in the 1970s, because feminist translators fought against the problem on “why is that women writers were invisible in history?” so they tried to tick off women writers’ works to translate them to English. Another thing that French feminists tried to do in theory position at their site as women, in literary works, in history, and everywhere in life was to write about women. But women writers found that language was invented by men for men so they could not find an appropriate language to write about women. So female writers then try to create new things, for example, new vocabulary, new syntax, and new grammar. Although this makes it very difficult for translators and writers to deliver the feminist message, they work together to find out the way on how to do it. From such a famous translation practice developed a famous translation series, so this is an effort made to fight against invisibility on women translators.

Another way to make female translators more visible is that translators prefix to tell people what they have done in this field for feminist purposes; how they try to achieve feminist purposes through this is also one strategy for them to fight against invisibility. An aftereffect that this phenomenon caused was the attention of translation studies scholars. They tried to do research on famous translation practices [like the one told before] and translation behaviour, all these led to the development of feminist translation studies and these studies spread to other countries, like China.

I have witnessed that because I also teach on an interpret translation program and the majority of the students are girls, of course. As well as in my module on translation studies, I talk about feminist translation practice and many students are very interested in gender, feminism, feminist translation and a lot of students write essays or dissertations from a feminist perspective —they pay attention to translations done by women, compare translations done by women and men and find out differences between the translations behaviour in delivering, in talking about women, in talking about feminism— so they see that most of the time women translators do better in translating women and feminism.

Therefore, this can be regarded as a part of the efforts to make women translators more visible, perhaps not feminist translators do such things directly, nevertheless a lot of things have led to the better of women translators. Also, this means that the readers of these studies, papers and works will be aware that there are better female translators, and will catch people’s attention to who the female translators are and what they have done.

There are two terms to refer to “feminism” in China. One is 《女权主义》nǚquán zhǔyì (woman rights) and the other is 《女性主义》nǚxìng zhǔyì (woman -ism), what is the main difference between these terms and which one is more used in feminist works nowadays?

The term 《女权主义》nǚquán zhǔyì refers to female rights, the main focus is on the rights. Just as in the first wave of Chinese feminism where the attention was on women’s rights. For example: marriage, education, and human rights in general. This is very important because that implies women did not have such rights and it expressed those rights should be given to women. If you express the term that focuses on the rights, it means that you are fighting for rights. This makes men fearful because they don’t like women being aggressive when they fight for their own rights.

The term 《女性主义》nǚxìng zhǔyì came into being in the 1990s. It was first used and adopted in Taiwan, and then it spread to mainland China. Chinese female scholars thought that after the Reform and opening of China, for more than a decade, the situation of women improved compared to the 1950s and 60s, when women were regarded as socialistic builders and did everything according to male standards.

So, during the 1980s and 90s, Chinese women got more aware of the problems of the past, and they started to correct them. That’s how a new focus on women appreciation emerged —where women’s femininity together with women’s physical difference from men should be recognized and acknowledged rather than masculinized women —, that’s why they expressed this as women-ism.

Additionally, society (especially men) often stigmatizes feminism. Men do not want to see women as fighters (against them) for rights, so this is also a way that female academics advocate harmonious development and relationships between both genders, men and women. This leads to a harmonious society and does not make men resistant to the women’s movement. That’s the difference between the meaning of those terms, and also behind the change of the term [feminism]. This has to do with the social background and women’s situation in different periods of time.

The end of the new century marks the beginning of the fourth wave of Chinese feminism which is characterized by feminist activism: lots of young people, young generations, organized lots of famous activities (talk shows, #Metoo movements, etc.) or different kinds of protests and again use fairways to fight for women’s rights because they found that the economic development leads to new problems for women. Women were more vulnerable at the economic situation since in the late 1990s (including the new century) some people were discussing that women should not compete with men in the career world and go back home to take care of their family because of the limited job opportunities. “Why should you come and compete with these men? Let men do the work and earn money and you go back to take care of your family.” This is a backward to the old concept of the gender role of women. However, new generations have read a lot of works from various sources, they have better gender awareness and sense of equality, plus they are not happy with this kind of backward movement, and they try to fight against this.

The term that people from younger generations often use is 《女权主义》nǚquán zhǔyì so this is, just again, rights of women. But in academic works many people prefer to use 《女性主义》nǚxìng zhǔyì. You might think they use this softer term in order not to irritate some people, because they hate this term. Another reason might be that comparatively speaking female academics enjoy a better position in society and they are not that bad in terms of rights.

In your chapter Censorship, sexuality and translation you mention that people thought that The Second Sex and The Vagina Monologues were sexual novels, but then they realized that these works were educative works and sought to make women aware of their differences and inferior position in the society. Since the introduction of these and other works to China, how much has changed in women’s life and their perception about the position they have in society nowadays?

One thing that has really changed is that more and more people from younger generations are being influenced by translated feminist works, and they have more gender awareness. They easily identify gender problems or gender inequalities in society, and they fight against them in many different ways. One of these ways is that teenagers keep importing information from outside China, especially from the West, to spread it and to keep people up to date on what is happening around the world.

With this awareness, another big change is that women aren’t and won’t be submissive any longer because they are recognizing what is acceptable and what is not, and they reject oppression as far as they can. For instance, in the job markets they recognize the suitable conditions, and their actions are spreading these ideas to people around them which will influence society. Yet, even with this gender awareness, we can still see that in the job market men are still preferred because they can easily find a job, get more opportunities, and be promoted.

Also, in urban areas women’s position has improved: many families many families had just one or two children due to one child policy (which was practiced for many years) but nowadays it doesn’t matter whether it is a boy or a girl, as every child is valued, and their parents invest in his/her future Meanwhile, in the past, when families had lots of children, they preferred to educate boys rather than girls.

However, in rural areas, families can’t afford education for each one of their children, that’s why they sacrifice girl’s opportunities, and they are sent to work, earn money, and support their male brother to be educated. In these areas, families still prefer boys and if they get a girl, they try to have another baby until they get a boy. This is a proof of the imbalanced development between rural areas and metropolitan areas.

Fortunately, more and more girls are studying at the university, and they are interested in feminist ideas, their awareness is raising because of university education and that is why it is very important to bring this remarkable changes that will produce a good impact on society.

In your book Translating Feminism in China: Gender, sexuality, and censorship you mention that the introduction of western feminism through translation led to a series of changes in China, which contributed to the development of Chinese feminism. However, we would like to know if there has been such a great impact on Chinese feminism from nonwestern feminist works.

I am not certain about the influence of nonwestern works upon Chinese feminism because the majority of works that started to be imported to China, after being closed to the outside world, came from western countries. In terms of feminism, I think that feminism was more advanced in the West, for instance, French feminism. Feminism in America was highly influenced by French feminism, and then American feminism was imported to China, and all of this happened because of translation. For instance, there are eight Chinese translations of The Second Sex and, except for the most recent one, they were all translated from English, because the majority of people understand English, but French is a very difficult language. However, the most recent translation of The Second Sex was translated from French to commemorate Simone de Beauvoir’s 100th anniversary. This translation was done by a professor of French literature.

There was a translation of a book from the Soviet Union in the 1950s, but I think we can still consider this as a western country. So, I think that there was not a great impact or influence in Chinese feminism from nonwestern works or at least they were not influential to me. Actually, I know little about that.

Regarding subjects like gender, the LGBTQ+ community, prostitution, and the #Metoo movement in China, do you think they have gained more visibility nowadays? Do you think translation has influenced this regard? If so, how?

Yes, I think that topics like gender, the LGBTQ+ community, prostitution, and the #Metoo movements have become more visible day by day. In the past, especially before the 1980s, people knew very little about that. Such topics came to light in the 1980s and the 1990s. The Internet and social media have definitely helped in this regard, because young educated people who can speak English use their platforms to spread information about what’s happening around the world regarding topics like these, and this kind of information spreads very quickly. They translate into Chinese the information they see, they also summarize news and spread them to Chinese people. Even though these topics are still sensitive in China and there is online censorship, it is quite impossible to stop news like these from spreading to the rest of the people. Another important factor is Chinese people who live, work or study abroad. They communicate with their families and tell them what’s happening in other parts of the world. So, I think translation somehow has played an important role in making these topics visible.

Do you think that translation of feminist works in China still faces censorship? What do you think are the greatest challenges that a female translator in China who translates feminism faces? What advice would you give to these female translators?

Yes, especially the translation of feminist works into Chinese still faces censorship, as I said before. I remember that one day I met an editor from a publishing house and when we talked about translating feminist works, she gave me an example of a book’s title that had to be changed in order to be published, so the wording is still very important.

This kind of censorship applies everywhere. At present, there is a list of keywords for online automatic censorship, for example. So, if what you are writing contains such sensitive vocabulary it will be censored, and it’s the same with translation, of course. That’s why people who have consciousness and awareness will do self-censorship, otherwise, it would be a pity if what you spent a lot of time translating gets censored, right? People surely are aware of that; they try hard to avoid being censored through some mechanisms of self-censorship.

Take online content as an example: if you try to upload something that contains the censor’s sensitive words to social media, it will be rejected, so sometimes people change some terms and then upload it again. If it gets rejected again, they try to modify it again, and again, until it can be finally accepted and posted online.

As to what advice I give to translators of feminist works in China, well it’s very hard to say because there are no clear guidelines on what will be censored, so you can only try to do it and see whether it is acceptable or not. It is always helpful to discuss it with editors or publishers and see what is more acceptable at the moment. The situation changes at different times so you never know what the rules and regulations are, all you can only do is just try and keep communication, for example, with the publisher or the editor, they know better.

We would like to express our most sincere gratitude to Dr. Zhongli Yu for this interview. We hope this work can lead translators to a further reflection on the wide range of censorship that we may encounter as a result of the differences between the source text’s context of production and the target text’s context of reception.