Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction: Preliminary Reflections on the Translation of a Genre

This paper deals with the rise of a new wave of Chinese science fiction over the last decades, attempting to draw a parallel to Twentieth-Century American science fiction. The author explores the many similarities (as well as some differences) between these two phenomena, relying on both translation studies and genre studies. Drawing on a definition of genre as a “recurring response to recurring situations” (Miller), the author briefly examines historical, social, and literary conditions of the two countries, providing examples of the agents, the works, and the reasons that allow us to describe this process as a form of “inter-generic translation”. This study aims at providing an overview of the present discourse on Chinese science fiction in relation to the American experience, highlighting the potential for further and deeper developments of this kind of analysis.