Erasing the translators: A history of pirated translation in Taiwan, 1949-1987

In the period of Taiwan's martial law (1949-1987), it was illegal to publish translations penned by translators living in Communist China. Fifty years of Japanese colonial rule (1895-1945) had only recently come to an end; the local population lacked familiarity with Modern Chinese, the new official language. As a result, few local translators were versed in Chinese; thus, many of the translations circulating in Taiwan came via Hong Kong, pirated from versions published in China. In total, some 600 translated titles from China were pirated in Taiwan with the names of at least 380 translators being erased. This paper aims to describe the political and linguistic reasons for this large-scale, decades-long piratic practice in translation, as well as the consequences thereof.