![]() ![]() ![]() From 1929 to 1989, Beckett wrote letters through which his life is depicted. Samuel Beckett, the Irish author and playwright was born in 1906 in County Dublin, Ireland and died in 1989, in Paris, France. Or, rather, the progress of the Chinese translation since the turn of the twentieth century mirrors both the re-evaluation of Beckett as an innovative artist and the ‘inward turn’ of Chinese intellectual circles. ![]() In retrospect, the transition between the two periods is a dramatic one from political misreading to aesthetic appreciation. ![]() The second period, characterized by a more complex aesthetic response, may be further divided into three stages: the first stage is marked by the pioneering Proust as a booklet on irrationalism and the debatable Collection of Samuel Beckett translated from French the second stage by the annotated Complete Works of Samuel Beckett the third stage by the scholastically motivated Letters of Samuel Beckett. The first period is dominated by the politically propelled translation of Waiting for Godot and harsh criticism of Beckett as a ‘decadent’ author. The article argues that the history may be divided into two periods: the pre-1980 period and the post-1980 period, with China's reopening to the outside world in the late 1970s as the watershed. In light of the relevant merits and defects of translation practice over sixty years, this article presents a critical history of the Chinese translation of the work of Samuel Beckett. ![]()
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