Features Of Translating And Disseminating Contemporary Chinese Literature

In recent years,as the Chinese government attaches greater importance to the going out of Chinese culture,publishers and cultural institutions in China have launched a large number of magazines and book series,such as 21 st Century Chinese Literature,Library of Chinese Classics,The Culture & Civilization of China book series,China Literature Today magazine,and Pathlight magazine.However,a review of literature reveals that most previous studies focused on the translation method,creative treason,translation criticism,and dissemination overview of individual literary works or works of individual authors,with limited researches on contemporary Chinese literature and the dissemination feature of literary works.The research objects of this paper are three magazines Chinese Arts & Letters,Chinese Literature Today and Pathlight,all of which were published after 2010.Different from a single book,a magazine can cover different literary genres and works of different authors,thus giving readers a better understanding of Chinese literature and culture,which is favorable for promoting Chinese literature and culture.This paper analyzes features of translating and disseminating contemporary Chinese literature based on communication models,evaluates the dissemination effect of the three magazines according to relevant data,and tries to explore reasons for bad dissemination effect with Pathlight as an example.The research questions include: What are features of translating and disseminating contemporary Chinese literature? Does dissemination channel affect the promotion of contemporary Chinese literature? Why Pathlight produces the poorest dissemination effect as compared with CAL and CLT?This paper collects information about the translators,dissemination contents,channels,receivers and effects of the three magazines from online databases,related literature,network media and magazine editors with methods of bibliographical research,interview and observation.It first induces and analyzes key factors influencing the translation and dissemination of contemporary Chinese literature based on Lasswell's model of communication,then analyzes the performance of these key factors in the three magazines,and at last analyzes reasons of bad dissemination effect based on the key factors.Conclusions of this paper involve three aspects.Firstly,most magazines promoting contemporary Chinese literature are translated in cooperation by Chinese and foreign translators,published with the involvement of Chinese organization(s),and not very well received.In addition,dissemination channel does influence the result of contemporary Chinese literature culture going out.The poor reception of Pathlight mainly results from publishing house's unfamiliarity with international publishing rules and practices,imperfect content selection,and undesirable translation quality,which deserve serious consideration.