ABSTRACT
The “Avant-garde movement” (先锋派) of the 1980s was one of the most innovative and challenging literary movements of the last century which saw the rise of “metafiction’ (元小说) in China. Many of the most famous works from this era, which include varying degrees of literary “self-reflexivity,” have now been translated into English. The self-reflexive function within postmodernist texts, however, can often be highly complex, and the specific dynamics of how literary self-reflexivity is translated is an under-researched topic within translation studies, especially between Chinese and English. Within this chapter I will analyze the translation strategies employed to transfer the self-reflexive function within key works of Chinese metafiction including The Lost Boat (迷舟) and Flock of Brown Birds (褐色鸟群), by Ge Fei (格非), Fabrication (虚构) by Ma Yuan (马原), and The Past and the Punishments (往事与刑罚) by Yu Hua (余华). In this chapter I will provide various examples of how the English translation strategies employed to handle Chinese self-reflexive literary devices often significantly alter their textual functions and in turn heavily alter the potential readings of the texts themselves. In doing so, this study will identify problem spaces within understandings of Chinese avant-garde authors in English translation and also attempt to offer new theoretical approaches towards identifying the specific dynamics of self-reflexivity in translation.
