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The global translation field is characterized by a core-periphery structure. The translation of Chinese literature into English falls into the category of translation flows from the periphery to the core. Combining Bourdieu’s field and capital with world literature studies, this article explores the factors impinging on the production, circulation and consecration of Chinese literature in the English literary field with the English translation of Nobel Laureate Mo Yan’s fiction as an illustrative case study. By so doing, the article shows that the logic of market dominant in the English publishing field plays a decisive role in the production and circulation of Chinese literature in the English world. The translation agents such as translators, publishers and editors act as gatekeepers in the selection process and facilitators in the consecration process. With the analysis of the case of Mo Yan, the article argues that the success and canonization of his fiction in the English world relies not only on the aesthetic and commercial stakes of its publishing context, but also on the promotion and consecration via the joint efforts of the English publishers, the editors, the literary agent and Howard Goldblatt who possess a multiplicity of capital in their own fields.

As a testimony to the lockdown life in Wuhan caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Fang Fang's Wuhan Diary received worldwide attention while triggering extensive controversies in China. Drawing on the concepts of agent and voice in translation studies, this article explores the contextual, paratextual and textual voices of translation agents in the English translation of Wuhan Diary (2020) and their power negotiations, to reveal who has the final say in positioning and rendering the text for an Anglophone readership. In so doing, the article shows that the author rather than the publisher plays a decisive role in producing the paratextual materials for the translation, and that the translator tend to employ the translation technique of omission to protect the author and himself. Furthermore, it finds that the author's request for the revision of such paratexts as the title and blurb, in conjunction with the translator's technique of omission in the translated text, boil down to responses to the critical voices from Chinese readers. Therefore, this article argues that the critical voices from Chinese readers have had the final say in the production and presentation of the English translation of Wuhan Diary.

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