Translation comparison

As I translated the last paper, I came across two passages that were translations of Leo Ou-fan Lee's Chinese. Here's a comparison between the Chinese, my translation of the Chinese, and the original English -- a useful exercise perhaps.

Passages below the fold:


The source of these remarks is

Lee, Leo Ou-fan. Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930-1945. Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999.

The Chinese version our author, QIn Yanhua, uses is

李欧梵：《上海摩登》，毛尖译，北京，北京大学出版社2001年版.

Passage 1, Original:

正如李欧梵所分析的，“是为了要把他的编辑方针和流行的编辑法区别开来：当时几乎所有的文学期刊的实际操纵者都是小‘党派’——在一个文学社团里的几个志同道合的朋友，持他们自己所提倡的文学和意识形态立场”[11]。

Shi "wants to put some distance between the guiding principles of his editing and popular editing methods. At the time, the commanding pattern of almost all literary periodicals was to form miniature 'schools' -- a group of friends in a literary society with shared ways and aims, supporting the literature they themselves promoted and their ideological positions."

p. 136

"Shi's emphasis on nonpartisanship was meant to distinguish his editorial policy from prevailing practice: most literary journals were in fact run by small 'cliques' -- groups of several like-minded friends who belonged to a literary society and advocated the same literary and ideological positions."

....

Passage 2, Original:

“李欧梵指出：“尽管施蛰存在‘创刊宣言’里声称他并不预备‘造成任何一种文学上的思潮、主义’，但杂志上刊登的外国文学作品清楚地映出了他本人对欧洲现代主义文学的偏好。”

My translation (sketched only, as I knew I would look up the quote later):

As Leo Ou-fan Lee points out, "Even though Shi Zhecun in his 'editors announcement' ... preference for European modernist literature."

Finally, the passage in Prof. Lee's original, from p. 137 of the book:

Thus, in spite of his avowed refusal to promote any literary trend or doctrine, the works of foreign literature published in the journal clearly mirrored his own literary preferences for European modernism, although he was not conscious of a modernist movement as such.

As you can see, the Chinese translation looks pretty good overall, though there are some minor differences. And it bothers me a little bit that our author elides part of Prof. Lee's sentence -- but I can understand that he or she wants to focus on the question that does not involve whether Lee was aware of international trends.