Il nome della rosa’s Translations in the Chinese Language

In 1980, Umberto Eco’s first novel Il nome della rosa was published in Italy and has quickly had global resonance, entering China by the late 1980s. Since then, six translations have been published in the Chinese language, including two issued by Taiwanese translators. It is interesting to observe how each version is able to refract the socio-cultural contexts of the translators, depending on the aspirations and cultural images created in the different periods and geographic areas. We need also consider that, especially in the case of Eco’s novels, the translators had to not only deal with the different needs and expectations of their readers but also imagine a ‘new model reader’, just as Eco did. Therefore, this paper aims at confronting the six different translated versions, by identifying the new model readers imagined by the translators, considering their own expectations, knowledge, and cultural context.