Abstract
It is generally assumed that the translation of Brazilian literature in the early years of the People’s Republic of China (1949-1966) was mainly driven by political forces, given the change of official ideology and the reforms of the publishing system at that time. However, this argument does not take into account the continuity of literary translation before and after 1949, nor does it consider the efforts of translators of the time to choose the best representatives of Brazilian literature and to preserve as much as possible the quality of the original works. By analyzing the translation of Brazilian literature in China from 1919 to 1966 as a whole, with special emphasis on the case of Jorge Amado, this article attempts to demonstrate that the publication of Brazilian literature after 1949 followed the same path as the translation of the literature of disadvantaged nations in the first half of the 20th Century, and that it aimed to challenge the cultural hegemony of Western countries in order to build a new nation and a new literature.
Keywords
Translation and reception; Brazilian literature; China; Cultural identity