Latin American Literature in China

Teng Wei (Professor of Comparative Literature, South China Normal University; HYI Visiting Scholar)
Chair and Discussant: David Wang (Edward C. Henderson Professor of Chinese Literature, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University)

This talk will first convey the brief history of Chinese translation of Latin American literature. From the establishment of the first Spanish Departments in Chinese universities, Hispanic language and culture have been deeply involved in the politics of contemporary China. Secondly, the talk will examine China’s translation and reception of Latin American literature from the perspective of cultural studies, discussing the complicated and subtle relationship between translation and politics and translation and ideology, uncovering the various kinds of misreading and mislocation, rewriting and miscontextualizations that have occurred in the process of translation and reception, with the purpose of providing a new point of view for understanding and analyzing literature and history in contemporary China. Thirdly, it will put forward the theoretical issue of what kind of role the translation of Latin American literature plays in the construction of contemporary China’s cultural identity, or in other words, what it signifies in contemporary China’s cultural context.