Discursive Mediation in Translation: Representation of the Harry Wu topic in the Chinese translations of Living History

This paper describes how mediation in translation is realized by means of
inclusion and exclusion of information at the selection stage and discursive
deviations at the presentation stage in the process of target text production. It
discusses the effect of mediation in relation to two types of the target text
recipients, one is termed professional readers representing the censoring
authorities and the other the intended reading public, and their respective
socio-cultural backgrounds. Our argument in this paper is that an investigation
of translation from the perspective of mediation helps reveal the power
struggle underlying the translation process. The detailed description of the
textual realization of mediation, in particular, helps create an awareness of the
various ways the target text producer may take to mediate the translation
process to achieve a compromise between the author’s interests and the
professional readers’ political concerns so as to get the translation published