Translation Networks and Power: An Archival Research on the English Translation of Mo Yan’s The Garlic Ballads

While the translator’s agency has attracted increasing attention in Translation Studies, it is rarely the translator alone who determines how to shape a translation. Other agents, such as literary agents, editors and publishers, are also involved in the translation production, with underlying power dynamics at various stages throughout the translation process. This article draws on a Bourdieusian framework to examine how the translation network of multiple agents interplayedin Howard Goldblatt’s English translation of Mo Yan’s The Garlic Ballads. By analysing the translator’s archival materials, the article showsthat although the translation project was initiated by the translator, it was completed for the mutual benefit of different agents, with the publisher having the strongest power in the translation network. Although the translator only played a minor role at the later stages of the translation process, the capital he gained in the translation field provided him with resources with which to play in the publishing field, which in turn enhanced his position in the translation field.