Nationalist theory translations were politically deployed to intervene in local conflicts

Evidence

Yet the most instructive cases are those where translators and publishers had motives beyond the immediately paedagogic. The Serbo-Croat version of 1990 came from the hope of Silva Meznaric and her associates that it might help the struggle to save ‘Yugoslavia’ from bloody self-destruction. Wu Rwei-ren’s version was meant to bolster the nerve of Taiwanese nationalism by explaining comparatively its late emergence, and by undermining Peking’s claim to the island on the basis, not only of Chinese nationalism, but also ‘ancestral tradition’ inherited from Manchu dynasts. The Greek translation, as we have seen, was part of an endeavour to check mindless local chauvinism over ‘Macedonia,’ and to criticize the parties of the Left for craven or unscrupulous adoption of essentially right-wing nationalist positions. Similarly, The Open University of Israel’s Hebrew translation, with an introduction by a well-known Palestinian Israeli, was part of an attempt to resist the long slide towards apartheid in the Likud-ruled state. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 828

Categorization

• XREF: Resonates with the chapter’s own argument that political concepts diffuse through local initiative and instrumentalization, self-referential to the book’s thesis. — connects to: Nationalists borrow others’ sacralized land narratives as strategic templates — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 184; Political groups adopt nationalist rhetoric opportunistically — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist…, 159; Nationalists justify state violence by invoking other states’ conduct. — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist…, 236 (+2 more)

Related

• Translations of theory books become political interventions in local nationalist struggles. (similarity 0.91)
• A translation can be deployed as an explicit intervention against state ideology (similarity 0.82)
• Nationalists borrow others’ sacralized land narratives as strategic templates (similarity 0.79)