First imitate, then translate : Histories of the introduction of stream-of-consciousness fiction to China

In China, stream-of-consciousness (SOC) fiction had for some time been thought of as untranslatable. By contrast, SOC imitations appeared in abundance through the 20th century, attempted by several Chinese writers who consciously used the technique in their own novels, first in the 1930s, then in the 1960s, and finally in the 1980s. It was not until the 1990s, however, that the "difficult" novels by James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, among others, were translated. How can we understand the phenomenon of translations following imitations in the history of SOC fiction as introduced to China? 1 Figure. Adapted from the source document