Translation and reception of Italo Calvino in China

Abstract

Calvino's works arrived in China surprisingly early. The first translated texts date back to the Fifties, when the writer, in his early thirties, was at the beginning of his career. The Chinese version is not a direct translation of the original texts of Calvino, but an indirect translation. This surprisingly early interest is followed by a long period of silence that goes from the second half of the Sixties until the end of the Seventies. The article will try to analyze the first translations of Calvino’s works published in China and to outline the reception of Calvino’s works in modern China in the last several decades. The contextual analysis is aimed to see the relationship between the translations and the historical and ideological context in which they were conceived.