Publications
Publication details [#20895]
Yu, Shuang. 2010. The era after reform and opening-up: developments in English translations of Chinese fictions, 1979-2009. Perspectives 18 (4) : 275–285.
Publication type
Article in jnl/bk
Publication language
English
Keywords
Source language
Target language
Abstract
The research on the English translations of Chinese contemporary fictions receives less attention than it deserves. Therefore, this article is concerned with such research and examines the selection of Chinese contemporary fictions for English translation from 1979 to 2009. The article combines a descriptive with an explanatory approach and takes polysystem theory as its framework. It describes the translation choice by mainland China, Hong Kong and the West respectively, and with the help of two key factors in polysystem theory - ideology and poetics - explains why mainland China, Hong Kong and the West select different fictions for English translations in introducing 'scar', 'retrospective' and 'reform' literature and why avant-garde fictions, almost neglected in mainland China, are enthusiastically translated in the West. It concludes that ideologies dominant in a certain society and poetics occupying a canonical position in a certain literary system will constrain the selection for translated fictions.
Source : Abstract in journal