Chinese Children's Literature and the Challenges of Internationalization. Cao Wenxuan's 'Qingtong Kuihua' in Italian Translation

The visibility of contemporary Chinese children's literature among foreign readerships has become a growing phenomenon in recent years, epitomized by the case of the celebrated Chinese writer Cao Wenxuan, the winner of the 2016 Hans Christian Andersen Award. Cao's acclaimed novels are characterized by stylistic sophistication, idyllic overtones, emotionally charged descriptions of tragic events, a deep-rooted pedagogical intent, and the description of the young characters' identity-building against the background of the shifts occurring in Chinese history and society. Such complexity strikingly emerges in translating these works for non-Chinese audiences: the translation must naturally take into account the formal specificity of the original and process its culture-specific traits, but these features often also undergo a degree of editorial rewriting to adapt them to the intended target readership. Using Cao Wenxuan's 2005 novel Qingtong kuihua ("Bronze and Sunflower") and its Italian translation as a case study, the publisher's forms and degrees of adaptation of the translator's manuscript will be described, with special reference to the treatment of vocabulary, syntax, figurative language, textual features, and aesthetic factors. Finally, a reflection on the adaptation strategy and its implications for the reception of Chinese children's literature by the foreign readership will be conducted.