Untranslated world literature: The Chinese novels of César Aira

Abstract

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.