Ma Jian is referred to by different definitions: “an international writer with Chinese characteristics”; “a Chinese writer with international characteristics”, definitely not a “‘fully Chinese’ writer, due to his clinch with the authorities back in the late 1980s” (Damgaard 177). On Chinese websites he is described as “an English writer that writes in Chinese”. As a representative of the Chinese diaspora, he not only lives in a “deterritorialized” literary space, but his novels also share a similar textual instability. Due to his bitter criticism to Chinese government and his internationally recognised role as a dissident writer, his works do not circulate in the PRC, and are mainly distributed thanks to the English renditions by Flora Drew. My paper aims to explore the power exerted by the translator “to form cultural identities, to create a representation of a foreign culture that simultaneously constructs a domestic subjectivity, one informed with the domestic codes and ideologies that make the representation intelligible and culturally functional” (Venuti 159). Ma Jian’s identity is challenged both in terms of authorship and readership, as the public his books are addressed to becomes a culturally undistinguished “western reader”, and the translator de facto becomes the real author.

l contributo analizza il potere esercitato dal traduttore nel formare identità culturali e nella costruzione di immagini letterarie che spesso si sovrappongono o sbiadiscono i confini nazionali. L’identità dello scrittore sinofono Ma Jian è messa in discussione sia sul piano del suo ruolo di autore sia in termini di lettori di riferimento della sua opera: il pubblico cui essa si rivolge è infatti un non meglio identificato “letto- re occidentale”, mentre la figura del traduttore si sovrappone de facto a quella dell’autore. Non solo Ma Jian, in quanto esponente della “diaspora cinese” contemporanea, vive in uno spazio letterario “deterritorializzato”, ma anche le sue opere sono oggetto di una simile instabilità testuale. A causa delle sue accese critiche al governo cinese e al suo ruolo internazio- nalmente riconosciuto di scrittore dissidente, infatti, i suoi romanzi non circolano nel suo Paese di origine, la Repubblica Popolare Cinese, pur essendo scritte in lingua cinese e, invece, sono distribuite e conosciute essenzialmente grazie alla traduzione in lingua inglese di Flora Drew.

Between the Transnational and the Translational: Language, Identity, and Authorship in Ma Jian’s Novels

PESARO, Nicoletta
2018-01-01

Abstract

Ma Jian is referred to by different definitions: “an international writer with Chinese characteristics”; “a Chinese writer with international characteristics”, definitely not a “‘fully Chinese’ writer, due to his clinch with the authorities back in the late 1980s” (Damgaard 177). On Chinese websites he is described as “an English writer that writes in Chinese”. As a representative of the Chinese diaspora, he not only lives in a “deterritorialized” literary space, but his novels also share a similar textual instability. Due to his bitter criticism to Chinese government and his internationally recognised role as a dissident writer, his works do not circulate in the PRC, and are mainly distributed thanks to the English renditions by Flora Drew. My paper aims to explore the power exerted by the translator “to form cultural identities, to create a representation of a foreign culture that simultaneously constructs a domestic subjectivity, one informed with the domestic codes and ideologies that make the representation intelligible and culturally functional” (Venuti 159). Ma Jian’s identity is challenged both in terms of authorship and readership, as the public his books are addressed to becomes a culturally undistinguished “western reader”, and the translator de facto becomes the real author.
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/10278/3685011
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