Abstract:
Eighty four translations of modern and contemporary Chinese literature were published in Spain between 1949 and 2010. The history of this under researched corpus of translations and their reception will form the basis of the discussion in this seminar. I will try to demonstrate two interrelated arguments: the marginality of modern and contemporary Chinese literature in Spain and the mediation of the Anglophone and Francophone literary systems in the Spanish reception. To do this, I will focus on the history of translations and I will use concrete examples from back covers, prefaces and reviews of translations. A detailed analysis of the reception process of Mo Yan’s works in Spain will also illustrate the main arguments. Ultimately, the recent history of translations of modern and contemporary Chinese literature in Spain will help us reflect on the complexity and the hierarchical nature of literary exchanges in a global scale.
About the Speaker:
Maialen Marin-Lacarta is a translator and Research Assistant Professor in the Translation Programme at Hong Kong Baptist University. She holds a PhD in Chinese Studies and in Translation and Intercultural Studies from the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilisations (INALCO) in Paris and the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Prior to joining HKBU, she taught at INALCO and the Open University of Catalonia. Among other works, she has translated Shen Congwen’s Calma (Alpha Decay, 2010) and La ciudad fronteriza (Bellaterra, 2013) in Spanish. In 2013, she was awarded the Jokin Zaitegi translation prize for the Basque translation of Mo Yan’s short story collection Hori da umorea, maisu! (Elkar, 2013). Her research areas include literary translation, modern and contemporary Chinese literature, literary reception, translation history and digital publishing.