“Confucius and unnamed boy”: intertextuality and adaptation

Abstract

In 2005, Sergio Capparelli met Marcia Schmaltz in a Beijing subway and invited her to co-translate Chinese tales for children and youngsters. This meeting resulted in a collection of over two hundred short stories, which were partially published in 50 Fables of Fabulous China (Capparelli; Schmaltz, 2007) and in Chinese Supernatural Tales (Schmaltz; Capparelli, 2010). In this paper, I present some reflections originated from the bibliographical research about the preparation of those source texts. The first reflection focuses on the influence of the philosophical doctrines of the traditional culture for the Chinese literary production, which has on education one of its main roles. The second one combines literary concepts such as prose fiction, children’s literature and intertextuality in the different cultural systems involved, which must be taken into consideration by the translator. The third one refers to the reconstitution process of the tale “Confucius and unnamed boy”, and to the texts referring to this tale. Finally, the forth reflection is about the translation process. In this part, we discuss the decisions which were made, taking into account the intrinsic aspects of the source texts in the Chinese cultural system for its transposition in the target culture system.