Chinese copy editors polish the Gray Lady (i.e., New York Times)

An interesting comparison of a Beijing Evening News translation (i.e., redaction) of a New York Times article, vis-a-vis the original piece as published by the Times, has been posted online by China blogger Black and White Cat. Quirkily enough, the Beijing Evening News is the same publication that gained lingering notoriety a few years ago for lifting a story straight out of The Onion–and publishing it as actual news.

In this new family-friendly Olympic NY Times-derived summary, "one-child policy" becomes "family planning rules" and volunteers "staffing the security stations, driving golf cars answering questions or just standing around and greeting people— 'communicating smile and building harmony,' in the words of a Beijing organizing committee news release" is morphed into volunteers "staffing the stadiums, gymnasiums and security stations, all of them wearing a smile" (emphasis added).

More notable than these linguistic shifts are wholesale deletions of anything that might be deemed critical of the Olympic enterprise or Beijing itself. The Olympics were certainly a point of pride for Chinese everywhere and a fantastic sporting event to behold, but they also came with a $44 billion price tag and wide-ranging impact, both positive and negative, for local residents. The New York Times did not hesitate to mention these details in its summary:

New York Times article: "The beggars and the homeless have been rounded up and banished from the streets. People have been urged to quit smoking and spitting, and to adopt the Western custom of standing in line for a bus, instead of jostling. Entire neighborhoods, especially some of the mazelike alleys known as hutong, have been razed to make way for newer, less-unsightly apartment blocks. And some 40 million plants have been placed along the road to the airport and in baskets along the downtown medians. It is as if the city has been hermetically sealed in a way that would eliminate anything unpleasant."

But in the hands of the Chinese censors, that paragraph became entirely different. Here is how that same paragraph appears in the Beijing Evening News piece: "There are big, modern apartment blocks. And some 40 million plants have been placed along the road to the airport and in baskets along the downtown medians. It is as if cheerfulness permeates the entire city."

Kudos to Black and White Cat for taking the time to translate and present this comparison.

Of course, the real master of redaction is Xinhua, China's official state mouthpiece news agency.

When not posting x-ray scans of Homer Simpson's brain, government photo-ops, defensive reactions against the 'biased' Western media, and/or skin-baring photo displays of well-proportioned women (a.k.a., "Skinhua")... Xinhua often publishes quite a few uniquely inspired edits of its own (usually with "agencies" as its only attribution of an original source).

Translation is truly an art.


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