What is Web Fiction?
Chinese Web Fiction, as used on this site, is used to refer to works published digitally in China. Web Fiction is an industry comparable to Japanese anime or Korean dramas; It is a cultural export that is popular among young people, and has become increasingly widespread in the West in recent years, with some works even ending up on The New York Times Bestseller List.
It is not a monolith, either: Web Fiction contains a multitude of genres, with some notable genres including danmei (Boy’s Love), modern romance, Wuxia (martial arts), matriarchal, and system fiction. Web Fiction is a hobby many people use as a social escape as well as being highly marketable, leading to questions of its “value” as a media genre. Web Fiction was the topic for the special topic course EAS-195: A Good (Chinese) Story at Grinnell College, which this website was created for.
A Case Study
The Web Fiction work being used as a case study for this site is Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu, specifically the 15th chapter. Mo Xiang Tong Xiu, or MXTX, is the most well-known Web Fiction author, at least in the West, thanks to her success with works such as Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation and Heaven’s Official Blessing. Both works are New York Times Bestsellers.
Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation uses ancient Chinese aesthetics and values, drawing on concepts such as Taoism and Confucianism through the concept of “cultivation” (a very popular subject in Web Fiction that involves working for supernatural power). It is also a danmei story, because it is a romance story between two men.
This novel was chosen as a case study for looking at translation in Web Fiction because of its popularity in the West, providing ample fan translations we could compare to the official translation.
Why Translation?
We have spent the semester talking about Chinese Web Fiction, especially how it could encourage cross cultural exchange between China and the West. Focusing on translation allows us to look into how Web Fiction has found success in the West, as well as the complications that come with that.
As well, the focus on comparing official, fan, and automatic translations as well as the differences in culture and language between Chinese and English draws attention to how involved and important of a process translation truly is.
What Translation Means for Web Fiction
Through studying the ways in which the most successful Web Fiction stories are shared via translation in the West, we reached the conclusion that it could point towards the West being more receptive to Chinese culture. By applying popular translation theories, we first take a broad look at the strategies both fans and official translations have employed when translating Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation. We then zoom in and investigate what complications may arise during the translation process, the cultural importance found in the novel’s titles, and the differences found between translation strategies.
Our recommended order for exploring our website is: