The First Chinese Rendition of the Prose Adaptation of Hamlet: Evidencing Change in Early Twentieth-Century China

Abstract

This article focuses on the Chinese rendition of Lamb’s prose adaptation of Hamlet, examining the factors affecting the domesticating strategies employed by the anonymous translator of this work. Based on Itamar Even-Zohar’s polysystem hypothesis, it not only explores the influence of an intra-literary polysystem on this translation, but also investigates the constraints imposed on it by an extra-literary polysystem. Finally, by taking the market failure of this work as a signal that translation had begun to move from periphery to centre, this article seeks to provide an insight into how changes occurring in the Chinese literary polysystem affected the route to modernization at the turn of the twentieth century.