The Indigenous Chinese Poetry of Jidi Majia and its Portuguese Translation: From hxohxo to berimbau

This article considers the ways in which indigenous Chinese Yi culture, as represented in the poetry of Jidi Majia, is reframed in Portuguese translations by José Luís Peixoto, which are themselves based on English translations by Denis Mair. Peixoto’s and Mair’s translations situate Jidi Majia’s poetry as indigenous writing that resonates with Western eco-poetics; the source texts can be read alternatively as a means of presenting Chinese indigeneity as an integral part of ‘modernity with Chinese characteristics’. Peixoto appeals to the metaphor of a ‘window’ to describe his anthology of translations. By drawing on scholarship in post-colonial and ecocritical translation studies, Jidi Majia’s source texts, English language bridging texts, paratexts that accompany the translations, and an interview with Peixoto’s Chinese informant, this article problematizes Peixoto’s implicit claim that translations offer an unmediated panorama of a pre-modern culture. The article illustrates the challenges faced by translators when they seek to make indigenous literatures accessible to readers whose cultural assumptions are framed quite differently from those of the community that is being represented.