Translation, transcultural remembrance and pandemic: a covert transediting of the Great Influenza memory for lessons to combat COVID-19 in Chinese online media

Abstract

Abstract This paper examines translation and transcultural remembrance of the 1918–19 Great Influenza or the more often yet mistakenly called “Spanish flu” for lessons to combat COVID-19 in Chinese online media. It presents a case study of “covert transediting” in the Shanghai Observer, i.e., a journalistic opinion that interweaves Chinese renderings of selected excerpts from four British and American media texts. With an integrated approach to travelling memory (Erll, Astrid. 2011. Travelling memory. Parallax 17(4). 4–18) via transediting, our analysis shows that the transeditor does not only choose source texts in terms of media and content, but also selectively reframes the “Spanish flu” memory for lesson learning in conjunction with the mainstream Chinese discourse and practice of COVID-19 control. It unveils how the Great Influenza is thus transculturally remembered in more simplified and ideologically agreeable manners through omission, summary translation, and transformation, while faithful transference is not sheerly dispensed. We contend that transcultural remembrance via transediting is a purposive, socio-culturally shaped practice involving interrelations and interactions of manifold factors, and we need a more complex approach to the politics of memory in translation. Journalistic translation, which is mostly covert and transediting, is among different genres of translation that shape transcultural memory; more research in their interplay is called for.