EACS-2016. Book of Abstracts

Section 6 21st Biennial Conference of the European Association for Chinese Studies 71 with the existing translations of the novel in other European languages (French, English, German) will be also carried out with reference to specific passages. Pan Shaw-Yu (National Taiwan University) Imagining the End: Translated Apocalyptic Stories in Early Twentieth Century East Asia Key words: translation, East Asian literature, Liang Qichao, apocalyptic imagination, Buddhism The concept of the “end of the world” that prevails nowadays mainly originates from the Judaeo-Christian tradition. It was introduced to East Asia through a cluster of religious and literary texts during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and was later on fueled by the burgeoning scientific discourse of astronomy and geology. In the twentieth century, with the help of mass media, the “end of the world” has become one of the most intriguing collective imaginations. When one traces the circulation and transformation of the image of the “end of the world” in modern Chinese literature, Liang Qichao’s (1873–1929) late Qing translation “Shijie mori ji” (AnAccount of the End of the World, 1902) stands out as the first translated fiction in China that concerns the subject in question. The original of Liang’s translation is the Japanese writer Tokutomi Roka’s (1868–1927) translation “Seikai no matsujitsu” (The End of the World, 1891), which is rendered from the French astronomer Camille Flammarion’s (1842–1925) “The Last Days of the Earth” (1891), a short story about the extinction of human race and the end of the Earth. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the Western concept and image of the “end of the world” interacted with the East Asian culture during the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century, how the translators appropriated Buddhist images and ideas, and how they consequently inspired literary writings. Taking the France-Japan-China travel of Flammarion’s science fiction “The Last Days of the Earth” as my starting point, I will analyze several translations of apocalyptic stories rendered by East Asian writers, such as Kuroiwa Ruikō (1862–1920), Kimura Shoushuu (1881–1955), Bao Tianxiao (1876–1973) and Xu Nianci (1875–1908), and explore how the appropriated idea of the “end of the world” and apocalyptic imagination influenced Japanese and Chinese modern literature. Pavlovic Mirjana (University of Belgrade) Serbian Translations of the Modern and Contemporary Chinese Fiction: A Historical Review and Future Perspectives Key words: Chinese fiction, Serbian translations, 59th International Belgrade Book Fair, reception, future projects This paper will focus on the history of the Serbian translations of the modern and contemporary Chinese fiction — from the first translation of Lu Xun’s selected short stories “The True Story of Ah Q” and Other Stories, translated in 1950 from Russian language by the Serbian renowned poet Desanka Maksimovic, up to the present time. According to the type of the translation, the history of Serbian translations of Chinese literary works could be devided into two stages. In the first stage (1950–1979) the Chinese modern and con- temporary fiction was translated exclusively through relay languages such as Russian, English and French. In the second stage (from 1980 till now) the translations have been done both through relay languages and directly from Chinese into Serbian. The special emphasis in our review will be given to the important results of 59th International Belgrade Book Fair held in 2014 when PR China was a guest of honor. This paper aims to examine which modern and contemporary Chinese writers were in the focus of publishers and sinologists’ interest in former Yugoslav republics (Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina) until 1991, and later on in Serbia, as well as the reasons that lie behind this interest. How thoroughly is modern and contemporary Chinese fiction introduced through the Serbian translations? What is the quality of these translations? What kind of reception the translated Chinese authors received in Serbia? Do the publishers/ translators have a strategic, long term plan for future translating projects? By examining these questions we also wish to encourage a discussion concerning translational practices in other countries, especially in those ones with a shorter history of Chinese studies.