Literary Translation as Strategy of Resistance: Ye Lingfeng’s Transcultural Reading of European War Literature during the Second Sino-Japanese War
Refereed conference paper presented and published in conference proceedings
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AbstractAgainst the grim backdrop of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), the Anti-Japanese war literature has become an important chapter of the modern Chinese literature since the 1930s. However, previous studies focused mainly on Chinese leftist writers’ anti-war writings and their national purpose. Discussions on Chinese modernist writers’ attachment to the leftist ideology and their contribution to the war-resistance literature have been very limited. A large corpus of Chinese modernists’ criticism and translations of European war literature in the particular historical context of China have been overlooked, thus making it a missing chapter in the study of Chinese Anti-Japanese war literature as well as Chinese modernist literature.
This paper focuses on Ye Lingfeng (1905-1975), a renowned Shanghai modernist writer, and his edited literary supplement “Yin Lin” of the newspaper Lih Po published in Hong Kong during the wartime period. Ye Lingfeng came to Hong Kong in 1937 and published certain number of criticism and translation of European war literature, including the Chinese translation of Henri Barbusse (1873-1935)’s famous anti-war novel Le Feu: journal d’une escouade (Under Fire: The Story of a Squad). This paper investigates how Hong Kong intellectuals tried to seek their freedom of speech by means of literary translation under the severe political censorship imposed by the British colonial government of Hong Kong. From a transcultural and trans-historical perspective, it also studies Barbusse’s and Ye Lingfeng’s individual perspective on war, internationalism and proletarian revolution, as well as the challenges facing them in Europe and Asia during the wartime.
This paper focuses on Ye Lingfeng (1905-1975), a renowned Shanghai modernist writer, and his edited literary supplement “Yin Lin” of the newspaper Lih Po published in Hong Kong during the wartime period. Ye Lingfeng came to Hong Kong in 1937 and published certain number of criticism and translation of European war literature, including the Chinese translation of Henri Barbusse (1873-1935)’s famous anti-war novel Le Feu: journal d’une escouade (Under Fire: The Story of a Squad). This paper investigates how Hong Kong intellectuals tried to seek their freedom of speech by means of literary translation under the severe political censorship imposed by the British colonial government of Hong Kong. From a transcultural and trans-historical perspective, it also studies Barbusse’s and Ye Lingfeng’s individual perspective on war, internationalism and proletarian revolution, as well as the challenges facing them in Europe and Asia during the wartime.
All Author(s) ListConnie Ho-yee Kwong
Name of ConferenceThe 23rd Biennial Conference of the European Association for Chinese Studies (EACS)
Start Date of Conference24/08/2021
End Date of Conference28/08/2021
Place of ConferenceLeipzig
Country/Region of ConferenceGermany
Proceedings Title23rd Biennial Conference of the European Association for Chinese Studies, EACS 2021
Year2021
Month8
PublisherEACS and the University of Leipzig
Place of PublicationLeipzig, Germany
Pages1 - 15
LanguagesEnglish-United Kingdom
KeywordsSecond Sino-Japanese War, Chinese Anti-war Literature, Political Censorship, Ye Lingfeng, Henri Barbusse, Leftist Internationalism
