The Bloomsbury Handbook of Modern Chinese Literature in Translation - (Bloomsbury Handbooks) by Cosima Bruno & Lucas Klein & Chris Song (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Offering the first systematic overview of modern and contemporary Chinese literature from a translation studies perspective, this handbook provides students, researchers and teachers with a context in which to read and appreciate the effects of linguistic and cultural transfer in Chinese literary works.

Translation matters. It always has, of course, but more so when we want to reap the benefits of intercultural communication. In many universities Chinese literature in English translation is taught as if it had been written in English. As a result, students submit what they read to their own cultural expectations; they do not read in translation and do not attend to the protocols of knowing, engagements and contestations that bind literature and society to each other. The Bloomsbury Handbook of ModernChinese Literature in Translationsquarely addresses this pedagogical lack.

Organised in a tripartite structure around considerations of textual, social, and large-scale spatial and historical circumstances, its thirty plus essays each deal with a theme of translation studies, as emerged from the translation of one or more Chinese literary works. In doing so, it offers new tools for reading and appreciating modern and contemporary Chinese literature in the global context of its translation, offering in-depth studies about eminent Chinese authors and their literary masterpieces in translation. The first of its kind, this book is essential reading for anyone studying or researching Chinese literature in translation.

Review Quotes

In this volume, leading scholars spotlight translation's centrality to modern Chinese literature and that literature's significance to the study of translation. They demonstrate the sheer breadth and depth of translation's role in Chinese literature and its reception around the world from Bloomsbury modernists to Google Translate, science fiction to Scandinavian pop lyrics, Cold War powerplay to the contemporary poetry of Chinese factory workers. Anyone wanting to understand why translation matters now more than ever to literature, China, and the world should read this book.
Jacob Edmond, author of Make It the Same: Poetry in the Age of Global Media

About the Author

Cosima Bruno is Reader in Chinese Literature at SOAS University of London, UK.

Lucas Klein is Associate Professor in Chinese Literature at Arizona State University, USA.

Chris Song is Assistant Professor in English and Chinese Translation at the University of Toronto, Canada.