A case study on Of Mice and Men: a comparison of the censorship process in the translation of sensitive texts across decades

• Main Author: Chua, Louis Mei Ting
• Other Authors: Cui Feng
• Format: Thesis-Master by Coursework
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2023
• Subjects: Humanities::Language::Linguistics
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/168460
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The study of censorship in translation is a subject that have received a significant amount of attention in the field of translation studies since many years ago. While several research articles have examined this area of focus, however, the spotlight has always been concentrated on the censorship and translation in the West, and they are mostly fixated on the topics of sexual references, politics, and religions – differences in the censorship on racial discrimination, gender discrimination, or ableism across decades have yet to be widely explored in translation studies. This paper aims to fill up the gap by reviewing and exploring the situation of censorship in China during the 1930s and 2010s through an analysis of Of Mice and Men, while it seeks to determine how censorship mechanisms may impact translators' output processes for translated sensitive literature. The results of text comparisons show that, to ensure the literature can be legally published in China, translators tend to practice self-censorship due to a vague directive in the aspects of censorship on discriminatory texts from the government bodies. The environment that the translators were in will also affect their choices on the translation strategies they will have to adopt. The study's conclusion will underline the difficulties faced by translators in delivering sensitive translations while conforming to censorship regulations.