外国作家向中国审查制度低头

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杰安迪, 向中国审查制度低头，外国作家的艰难抉择. 纽约时报中文网, Oct 21, 2013.
http://cn.nytimes.com/china/20131021/c21censorship/

, which is translated from

Andrew Jacobs, Authors Accept Censors’ Rules to Sell in China. New York Times, Oct 21, 2013 (front page).

Quote:

Such compromises [foreign writers' consent to China's censorship], almost unheard of just five years ago, are becoming increasingly common as American authors and their publishers are drawn to the Chinese market. * * * [Besides direct sales (such as e-books) by American publishers,] China can also be a gold mine for royalties [of translations]. Last year JK Rowling took in $2.4 million here, and Walter Isaacson, the author of the biography 'Steve Jobs,' earned $804,000, according to the Huaxi Metropolitan Daily in Chengdu, which publishes an annual list.

"But while best-selling mysteries like 'The Da Vinci Code,' by Dan Brown, or classics like Gabriel García Márquez’s 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' are often faithfully translated, the authors of sexually explicit works or those that touch on Chinese politics and history can find themselves in an Orwellian embrace with a censorship apparatus that has little patience for the niceties of literary or academic integrity. Some books, like 'Fifty Shades of Grey,' the erotic blockbuster by EL James that has been published in more than three dozen countries, may be beyond salvaging. A Chinese publisher who reportedly paid handsomely for the rights last year has so far been thwarted from bringing it to press, according to industry executives.

" Qiu Xiaolong 裘小龙, a St. Louis-based novelist whose mystery thrillers are set in Shanghai, said Chinese publishers who bought the first three books in his Inspector Chen series altered the identity of pivotal characters and rewrote plot lines they deemed unflattering to the Communist Party. Most egregiously, he said, publishers insisted on removing any references to Shanghai, replacing it with an imaginary Chinese metropolis called H city because they thought an association with violent crime, albeit fictional, might tarnish the city’s image. Mr Qiu, who writes in English but was born and raised in China, said that he had reluctantly agreed to some of the alterations, and only after heated discussion, but that others had been made after he approved what he thought were final translations. 'Some of the changes are so ridiculous they made the book incoherent,' he said in a phone interview. Having been burned three times, he said he has refused to allow his fourth novel, 'A Case of Two Cities,' to be printed in China.

"More recently, a Chinese version of Alan Greenspan’s 'Age of Turbulence' [his 2007 memoir] was shelved after he refused to approve significant changes to the book. James Kynge, a columnist for The Financial Times and the author of 'China Shakes the World: A Titan’s Rise and Troubled Future — and the Challenge for America,' [Houghton Mifflin,2006] walked away from a potentially lucrative deal last year after one publisher demanded that an entire chapter be cut. 'As a journalist committed to accuracy,' he said, 'I felt it would be terrifically hypocritical to waive that principle just to gain access to the Chinese marketplace.' But such stands, it seems, are becoming increasingly rare.

" Rebecca Karl, a professor of modern Chinese history at New York University whose book 'Mao Zedong and China in the Twentieth-Century World: A Concise History[(Duke University Press, 2010),]' was recently purchased by a Chinese publishing house. She said most of the cuts demanded by her publisher, Hunan People’s Publishing, were relatively painless, although she fought back on every one of them. 'It’s about what I expected,' she said. What she did not expect was that the book would be withheld from publication. The book was rushed to publication for the coming 120th anniversary of Mao’s birth, but when Ms Karl came to China for the launch in June, it had been canceled. 'It could end up never being published,' she said.

Note:
(a) "Topics that deal with ethnic tensions, Taiwan and Falun Gong, the banned spiritual movement, are off limits, and books that contain even a passing reference to the Cultural Revolution or contemporary Chinese leaders can expect fine-toothed scrutiny."

For "fine-toothed," see
fine-tooth comb (n): "a comb with many small teeth
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fine-tooth%20comb
(b) "'The impressive thing is how much actually got through,' Mr [Ezra] Vogel said. Michael Meyer, whose 2008 book, 'The Last Days of Old Beijing,' laments the destruction of the city’s historic fabric, had a similar reaction after seeing the final galleys of the Chinese edition last year. 'I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop,' he said. * * * [Chinese editors also made] a title change [of book title] that sought to cast the book as a nostalgic love letter ('See You Again, Old Beijing')."
(i) "'I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop," said Michael Meyer. What he meant is he saw teh "final galleys," could not really believe it, and expected more cuts that did not come.
(ii) “See You Again, Old Beijing”  再会,老北京