Language and Audience are related like Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez

OR: Read to the end for a neo-Nazi analogy…

We haven’t blogged in a couple of weeks, and now our first assignment after the layoff is a real head-scratcher: “What WOULD the works of Ha Jin and Conrad have been like if they hadn’t written in English?” It’s hard for me to project reactions that never happened, mostly because I like to be right and this is impossible to prove, but I think it’ll be interesting to think about the differences in how these works would have turned out if written in the authors’ native tongues.

For one thing (and I’m sure many if not all of us will mention this in some way) Ha Jin’s works would have been censored in China. No artist likes censorship, so I’m sure that was probably the biggest factor in his decision to write in English. However, since this is hypothetical anyway, had his works been written in Chinese AND been uncensored, they likely wouldn’t have gotten the adulation we English-speakers give them. The works help us question our cross-cultural relationships, and from instances in what we’ve read, the Chinese culture doesn’t embrace questioning, nor cross-cultural relationships. While I’m sure there would be many free-thinkers and scholars in China who would relate to and admire the stories, I’m fairly certain the other 1.3 billion people in China would either consider them smut or be indifferent. China is definitely becoming more accepting of changing points of view, but it still has a long way to go. Perhaps there will be more “free-thinking” literature written in Chinese in the future, but I think that right now China is still too used to the artistic oppression and isolation it has recently experienced to embrace stories like Ha Jin’s. In English, however, we can admire these works for their brilliant ability to show Western civilization not only what it’s like to live in China, but also how the Chinese think, and what they value. Reading these works of art is a great way to better know the Chinese, and to better understand how the Chinese view the West.

Conrad’s Heart of Darkness hits its audience better for being written in English as well. English speakers would have been far more struck by the effects of colonialism than Polish-speakers. Nothing against Poland, but I just don’t view it as a global imperial power. Conrad was obviously trying to shed some light on the brutalities a colonial system presents, and England was the preeminent colonial power, so it makes perfect sense for him to write in English. A Polish work by Jozef Korzeniowski 1) wouldn’t have reached an English audience concerned with its themes and 2) would have reached a Polish audience unconcerned with its themes.

In short, I think I can understand what Ha Jin was trying to say in his article: It’s important to match an audience with your work’s themes. You wouldn’t read a biochemistry lab report on golgi body sulfate metabolism to a class full of third-graders, and you wouldn’t read a pamphlet of neo-Nazi propaganda at a Synagogue (ta-da!). Once Ha Jin and Conrad both understood what issues were most important to them, they also realized that the English language would reach the audience most concerned with those issues.