“On the Road” in China: the cultural dynamics and the historical transformations of its Chinese retranslations (1962–2006)

From the perspective of cross-cultural communications, translation is frequently perceived as a cross-cultural process influenced by ideological forces. The history of the multiple Chinese retranslations of On the Road—a cornerstone of American Beat literature—published in mainland China between the 1960s and the early twenty-first century serves as a compelling testament to this notion. Over the decades, this novel has been translated into five distinct Chinese editions, with interpretations of the original text fluctuating significantly—from being dismissed as literary trash to being celebrated as a literary classic. By situating these shifts in textual interpretation within the historical and sociocultural context of mainland China, this paper seeks to demonstrate that the relationship between ideology and translation is neither linear nor unidirectional. Instead, it often exhibits more intricate dynamics. On one hand, there are evident cases of manipulation, or what might be described as collusion, between translation and prevailing ideologies. On the other hand, translation can also evolve independently of ideological frameworks, occasionally diverging to the extent of challenging or even subverting dominant ideologies. Such a phenomenon underscores the inherent autonomy of translation as sociocultural acts.