Pratiche traduttive del romantasy cinese in Italia. La resa di Mo Xiang Tong Xiu tra fandom e alchimia taoista

Over the past decade, online-born danmei 耽美 novels, the Chinese declination of Japanese-inspired “Boys’ Love”, achieved a success that acted as a pull factor on the global publishing and entertainment market. This is especially true for works set in a fantastical context and drawing on xianxia 仙侠 tropes, i.e. that build on a fictional reworking of Daoist alchemical tradition, such as Mo Xiang Tong Xiu’s three novels Renzha fanpai zijiu xitong (2014), Modao zushi (2016) and Tianguancifu (2018). The paper will present the challenges that accompanied the Italian editorial translation of these three novels, that aimed to reach both a brand new public and an already active fandom, eager to scrutinise and comment on the translations in a transmedia and interactive environment. Criticism by the sino-italian readership, in particular, led to opening up new interlocutory practices and to the hiring of sensitivity readers to approve or dismiss some of the most critical decisions. The analysis will focus in particular on the strategies of domestication or foreignization assumed by the translators in approaching the philosophical and historical background, and on the adjustments that the confrontations with these readers allowed to make.