Pandemic Emotions: Translating Feelings from the Future in Chen Qiufan’s “Contactless Love”

The importance of emotion for crafting a literary text is well-known, but what happens to these emotions once the original text is translated into another language? This article explores the interplay between emotions and literary translation by focusing on contemporary Chinese science fiction writer Chen Qiufan’s short story “Wu jiechu zhi lian” (Contactless Love, 2022) and its English translation. The plot revolves around the protagonist’s fear and worry about the COVID-19 pandemic, envisioning a future in which the virus is still present and Artificial Intelligence helps humanity to deal with it. By applying the theoretical framework of Affect Studies to narratology, this article will identify the main strategies adopted by the English translator and analyze their impact on the description of emotions in the target text. Indeed, while the influence of “affect” on literary texts has been widely explored, the same cannot be said for their translations, especially when they involve a process of translation from Chinese into a Western language. This study contributes to the understanding of how emotions are represented in literary texts and their translations, emphasizing the narratological impact of such choices.