Book translation policy of China Foreign Languages Bureau from 1949 to 1999: a historical and bibliometric perspective

Abstract

ABSTRACT Governments not only develop translation policies in the ‘strict domain of public and political affairs’, but also ‘implement legal rules for the importation and export of all sorts of cultural products’. This study, which looks at the book translation of the China Foreign Languages Bureau, is an exploration of the latter kind. FLB is China’s state agency of international communication established in 1949. In over seventy years, it has published translations in book form in different languages for export, with topics ranging from politics to economics, from literature to art and even natural sciences. This article makes use of González Núñez’s model of translation policy in tracing the diachronic transformation of FLB’s book translation policy as found in its translation management and translation beliefs in its first 50 years. Then, a bibliometric analysis of the actual translation practice is conducted, with a view to explicating the distribution of text types and topics over the years and its relatedness to the management and beliefs. As a study in institutional translation, this article also aims to shed light on the institutional forces that shape the production of translation.