Paris by Way of the Moon: Translations of French Popular Fiction in Late-Qing China (1899-1912)
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Date
2021-09-13
Authors
Moore, Robert
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Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
During the final years of the Qing dynasty, works from outside of China were finding greater and greater popularity among Chinese readers, due in large part to the fact that translators altered them significantly. I confront the tendency of scholars who see these translations as either a betrayal of their source material or target readership by elevating the importance of the reader and source culture. By doing so, we see not only how the idea of fidelity in translation should work both to and from the translator, but also how source cultures were each translated differently. I focus on French works so as to demonstrate how French cultural authority in the 19th and early 20th centuries was preserved, but put into dialogue with traditional Chinese literary forms so as to both challenge and accommodate the Chinese reader simultaneously.
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Keywords
China, France, Qing