Untranslated world literature: The Chinese novels of César Aira

ABSTRACT

Through a new perspective that critically draws on the latest findings of world literature studies, this article adds insight to non-translation – a topic thus far under-researched in translation studies – by probing its correlation with insufficient mediation as well as censorship (both real and potential). Specifically, the article focuses on the intriguing exclusion of two China- and Chinatown-themed works of fiction by Argentine writer César Aira, Una novela china and El mármol, from the author’s nine titles recently available in Chinese translation. I argue that the “political incorrectness” of both works in the current PRC context, compounded by a US publisher’s restrictive, filtered, yet indispensable mediation, has left Aira’s Chinese novels – paradigmatic of transculturality and worldliness in an age of globalization – both untranslated and untranslatable for the Chinese book market in the foreseeable future.

KEYWORDS:

• César Aira
• China
• non-translation
• mediation
• censorship
• world literature

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 All translations from Chinese and Spanish in this article are my own unless otherwise noted.

2 Zhao’s translation titled 女裁缝与风 (The Seamstress and the Wind) is in fact a collection of two novellas by Aira, namely, La costurera y el viento and La cena. Likewise, Yu based her translation, 艾拉医生的神奇疗法 (The Miracle Cures of Dr. Aira), on the 2007 Mondadori collection comprising effectively three novellas, namely, Las curas milagrosas del Dr. Aira (1998), Fragmentos de un diario en los Alpes (2002), and El tilo (2003).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yunfei Bai

Yunfei Bai is an Assistant Professor in Translation Studies at Lingnan University. He previously worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the Society of Fellows in the Humanities at the University of Hong Kong. He is broadly interested in comparative linguistics, censorship in translation, translation and ideology, and East–West cross-cultural representation.