Genres, Translation and the International Dissemination of Chinese Fiction

Genre can be a powerful tool for the promotion and dissemination of literary texts through translation. Genre recognition and genre’s success in a specific cultural area and historical period can be effective motivations for publishers to accept or support a translation proposal, as the potential readers might be attracted by a Chinese novel relying on the possibility to recognise it as belonging or referring to a certain genre. As Hatim and Mason (1990) have argued, genre and genre membership are pivotal factors which affect the translator’s decision-making process. In addition, Lucie Biel (2018, 154) highlights the importance of generic conventions as indices of cultures: in translating a text “the translator is bound by 'generic constraints' […] related to communicative purposes, rhetorical mode and intentionality behind a specific genre in the source and target language”. Genres not only affect the translator’s behaviour, but they also guide readers’ tastes and horizon of expectations. We can consider genres or the knowledge of genres as cognitive schemata readers adopt in order to comprehend actual texts. Therefore, in analysing the reception of Chinese literature abroad, it might be useful to adopt the perspective of genre expectations among publishers and readers as a key factor for understanding the different response of foreign cultures to a literary Chinese work. In my paper, I will analyse some crucial aspects regarding the translation and reception of Chinese fiction, in terms of literary genre or subgenre identification, providing some examples taken from the corpus of modern Chinese fiction in translation. Biel, Lucie (2018). “Genre analysis and Translation.” In The Routledge Handbook of Translation Studies and Linguistics, ed. by Kirsten Malmkjœr. London and New York: Routledge, 151-164. Hatim, Basil and Mason (1990). Discourse and the translator. London: Longman