Chinese Popular Culture in Translation and Transmission

The introduction to the Special Issue, ‘Chinese Popular Culture in Translation and Transmission’, provides an overall view of the theme. It starts with a discussion of the definition of popular culture and its powerful presence in today’s world assisted by technological development. To follow is a sketch of Chinese popular culture in the contemporary political and cultural context. We then propose a translational perspective, through which modes and issues of exchange, mediation and intervention when Chinese popular culture enters the western cultural and ideological landscape can be located, examined and analysed. Finally, five articles in this special issue – respectively on ‘tai chi’, Peppa Pig and China, internet celebrities and Chinese learning, Chinese online literature in English translation and fan translation of BL web novels – are briefly introduced. When read together, the collection reveals some paradigms and trends of Chinese popular culture in global cultural flow.