Cover not available
Article published In:
Translation and Interpreting Studies
Vol. 16:3 (2021) ► pp.416–433

Translating sexuality in the context of Anglo-American censorship

The case of Jin Ping Mei

ORCID logo | Monash University

This article presents a descriptive study of the English translations of the classic Chinese novel Jin Ping Mei in the context of the Anglo-American literary censorship of obscenity in the twentieth century. By scrutinizing the strategies employed in the English translations of Jin Ping Mei, this article uncovers the dynamic interactions between literary translation activities and the evolving socio-historical contexts in the target culture. The resurrection of the archaic source text, particularly its erotic component, in the Anglophone world in the twentieth century was based on the (re)discovery of its value in the contemporary target context. In the case of Jin Ping Mei, equivalence at the linguistic and textual levels was simply not a concern of the translators and publishers, who had to decide how they would deal with the social reality of literary censorship, by submissively conforming to its demands, or by creatively confronting them.

Keywords: literary censorship, obscene publications, sexuality, Jin Ping Mei , paratext, translation strategy
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • English translations of JPM in the context of Anglo-American censorship
  • Sexuality in translation: Strategies and their implications
    • Stratification of readership
    • Utilization of expert opinions
    • Recourse to discrepancy between texts and paratexts
    • Exploitation of “loopholes” in the legal system
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 5 February 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tis.19010.qi
References
Anonymous
1953 The Harem of Hsi Men. New York: Universal Publishing and Distributing Corporation.Google Scholar
1987 The Love Pagoda: The Amorous Adventures of a Lord and His Six Wives. New York: Carroll & Graf.Google Scholar
and Albert Ellis 1965 The Love Pagoda: The Amorous Adventures of Hsi Men and His Six Wives. Chatsworth, CA: Brandon House.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre
1986 “The forms of capital.” In Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, ed. by John G. Richardson, 241–258. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.Google Scholar
Boyer, Paul S.
2002 Purity in Print: Book Censorship in America from the Gilded Age to the Computer Age. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Campos, Haroldo de
2009 “On translation as creation and as criticism.” In Translation Studies: Critical Concepts in Linguistics (Vol. 11), ed. by Mona Baker, 130–145. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Chu, Tsui-Jen
1927 The Adventures of Hsi Men Ching. New York: Priv. Print for the Library of Facetious Lore.Google Scholar
Cocks, H. G.
2004 “Saucy stories: Pornography, sexology and the marketing of sexual knowledge in Britain, c. 1918–70.” Social History 29(41): 465–484. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Colligan, Colette
2002 “ ‘Esoteric pornography’: Sir Richard Burton’s Arabian Nights and the origins of pornography.” Victorian Review 28(21): 31–64. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2014 A Publisher’s Paradise: Expatriate Literary Culture in Paris, 1890–1960. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.Google Scholar
Comstock, Anthony
2009 Traps for the Young. New York: Cosimo.Google Scholar
Craig, Alec
1962 The Banned Books of England and Other Countries. London: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
De St. Jorre, John
1994 Venus Bound: The Erotic Voyage of the Olympia Press and its Writers. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Fryer, Peter
1966 Private Case – Public Scandal. London: Secker & Warburg.Google Scholar
Genette, Gérard
1997 Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Girodias, Maurice
1965 The Olympia Reader: Selections from the Traveller’s Companion Series. New York: Grove Press.Google Scholar
1993 “Commentary.” In The New Olympia Reader, ed. by Maurice Girodias, 852–891. New York: Quality Paperback Book Club.Google Scholar
Goldberg, William T.
2010 “Two nations, one web: Comparative legal approaches to pornographic obscenity by the United States and the United Kingdom.” Boston University Law Review 90(5): 2121–2148.Google Scholar
Gregory, John Stradbroke
2002 The West and China Since 1500. New York: Palgrave. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hanna, Sameh F.
2005 “Othello in Egypt: Translation and the (un)making of national identity.” In Translation and the Construction of Identity, ed. by Juliane House, M. Rosario Martin Ruano, and Nicole Baumgarten, 109–128. Seoul: IATIS.Google Scholar
Hardwick, Lorna
2001 “Who owns the plays?: Issues in the translation and performance of Greek Drama on the modern stage.” Eirene (Studia Graeca et Latina, Theatralia) 371: 23–29.Google Scholar
Kaufman, Michael T.
2007 “Albert Ellis, 93, influential psychotherapist, dies.” The New York Times 25 July 2007 [URL]. Last accessed 30 December 2020.
Malzberg, Barry N.
1993 “Foreword.” In The New Olympia Reader, ed. by Maurice Girodias, ix–xv. New York: Quality Paperback Book Club.Google Scholar
Marcus, Steven
2009 The Other Victorians: A Study of Sexuality and Pornography in Mid-nineteenth-century England. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.Google Scholar
McCutcheon, Paul
2017 A Different Kind of Stranger: Foreign Bodies, Hybrids, and the Cultural Politics of Sex Offense. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University at Buffalo.Google Scholar
Meng, Wu Wu
1958 Houses of Joy. Paris: Olympia Press.Google Scholar
Miall, Bernard and Arthur Waley
1939 Chin P’ing Mei: The Adventurous History of the Mandarin and His Six Wives. London: The Bodley Head.Google Scholar
Moulton, Ian Frederick
2000 Before Pornography: Erotic Writing in Early Modern England. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
O’Sullivan, Carol
2009 “Translation within the margin: The ‘Libraries’ of Henry Bohn.” In Agents of Translation, ed. by John Milton and Paul Bandia, 107–130. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Paul, James and Murray Schwartz
1957 “Obscenity in the mails: a comment on some problems of federal censorship.” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 1061: 214–253. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pym, Anthony
2014 Exploring Translation Theories. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
2018 Jin Ping Mei English Translations: Texts, Paratexts and Contexts. New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rabinowitz, Paula
2014 American Pulp: How Paperbacks Brought Modernism to Main Street. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rembar, Charles
1968 The End of Obscenity. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Robertson, Geoffrey
2010 “The gamekeeper had a wife also…” In Lady Chatterley’s Lover, ed. byD. H. Lawrence, 303–313. London: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Server, Lee
2002 Encyclopedia of Pulp Fiction Writers. New York: Facts on File.Google Scholar
Sezgin, Erkan and Medet Yolal
2012 “Golden Age of Mass Tourism: Its History and Development.” In Visions for Global Tourism Industry, ed. by Murat Kasimoglu, 73–90. IntechOpen. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sigel, Lisa Z.
2005 International Exposure: Perspectives on Modern European Pornography, 1800–2000. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
St. André, James
2003 “Modern translation theory and past translation practice: European translations of the Haoqiu Zhuan.” In One into Many: Translation and the Dissemination of Classical Chinese literature, ed. by Leo Tak Hung Chan, 39–66. New York: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Sutherland, John
1982 Offensive Literature: Decensorship in Britain, 1960–1982. Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble.Google Scholar
Tahir-Gürçağlar, Şehnaz
2002 “What texts don’t tell: The uses of paratexts in translation research.” In Crosscultural Transgressions: Research Models in Translation Studies II, ed. by Theo Hermans, 44–60. Manchester: St. Jerome.Google Scholar
Tebbel, John William
1981 A History of Book Publishing in the United States. New York: R. R. Bowker.Google Scholar
Toury, Gideon
2012 Descriptive Translation Studies – and Beyond. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Xiaoxiaosheng and Clement Egerton
1939 The Golden Lotus: A Translation, from the Chinese Original, of the Novel Chin P’ing Mei. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Xiaoxiaosheng and David T. Roy
1993 The Plum in the Golden Vase, or, Chin P’ing Mei (Vol.1 11: The Gathering). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Olivová, Lucie & Ondřej Vicher
2022. On Translating Jin Ping Mei into Czech. In Encountering China’s Past [New Frontiers in Translation Studies, ], ► pp. 207 ff. DOI logo
Qi, Lintao & Shani Tobias
2022. Japanese Translations of Jin Ping Mei: Chinese Sexuality in the Sociocultural Context of Japan. In Encountering China’s Past [New Frontiers in Translation Studies, ], ► pp. 125 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.