Why "Camel Xiangzi" is loved by foreign readers: a foreign acceptance of modern Chinese literature

Author: Ma Yuqing (Ph.D., College of Literature, Shandong Normal University); Li Zonggang (Professor, College of Literature, Shandong Normal University)

We know that at the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the People's Republic, the translator Lin Shu translated a large number of Western novels in Chinese and became the enlightenment reading material for many Chinese to understand Western literature at that time. One of the notable phenomena is that when translating, the translator is not completely faithful to the original text, and in some places, the original text has even been greatly increased.

These novels also opened a window for Qian Zhongshu when he was a teenager to glimpse the vast world of Western literature, leaving a deep impression on him. When conducting academic research many years later, he compared the original text and the translation, and believed that although some of the additions and changes in the translation did not conform to the original text, they added a lot of color to the translation and played an "anti-corruption" role. These adaptations with personal characteristics have objectively stimulated the reading interest of more domestic readers.

In fact, in the process of the external dissemination of modern Chinese literature, there are also such "blackmail" translations. Translators did not strictly adhere to the principle of faithfulness in translation, but the translation was quite successful in its dissemination effect. The spread of Lao She's famous book "Camel Xiangzi" in the United States is a case in point. The translator made a "creative translation" of the work. Hooking up this history is of great benefit to our understanding of the complexity of translation today and to pushIng Chinese literature to the world.

The novel Shoko the Camel was first serialized in Cosmic Wind in September 1936 and remained serialized until October 1937. This is the result of Lao She observing the lives of the working people at the bottom of the city for many years, and spending more than half a year collecting materials and concentrating on writing behind closed doors for more than a year.

In 1945, Rickshaw Boy, the first English translation of Shoko the Camel, was published in New York, USA. Local literary critics immediately recommended the work in newspapers and periodicals such as The New York Times, The New York Herald Tribune, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, and Atlantic, and was loved by a large number of American readers. This is not only closely related to Lao She's superb language art and the accurate depiction of the Customs of Peiping at that time in his works, but also greatly related to the translation and adaptation strategy of translator Ivan Jin.

Ivan King incorporated some of the native cultural elements of the United States at the time into Shoko the Camel. In the process of translation, he even added characters, deleted character dialogues, changed the main line and ending of the story, and increased the proportion of some spiritual culture actively advocated by the United States after World War II in the translation. In the recommendation of Ivan King's important promotional magazine "Monthly Book Club News", there is this comment:

"The ultimate test of a novel's success is whether it can arouse our empathy." E· M. Foster (English novelist and literary critic) said. As long as you are still alive, you will most likely be deeply moved by the protagonist of this novel. His efforts for the most humble happiness will bring tears of sympathy to sensitive readers. Fate could not defeat him, and the good nature of man was revealed to him and eventually won a great victory... Our five judges unanimously agreed that Shoko the Camel— the work of a Chinese writer hitherto unknown to the American public — was one of the most outstanding novels of our time.

This shows that the emotions, outlook on life and worldly concepts of the protagonist in Ivan King's translation can all be in line with the spirit advocated or popular in American society at that time, so that readers on the other side of the ocean can empathize with the protagonist. When translating, Ivan Kim chose to adapt the ending in the original book where Shoko found out that Xiaofuzi hanged herself and went to a complete depravity, and shoko saved the dying Xiaofuzi, and the two left together and found a free "reunion" ending.

In this way, Ivan King, through his narration of the typical character, Xiangzi's perfect deeds, conveys to American readers the wartime spirit of the Chinese people who still maintain a strong will to forge ahead despite the difficult situation, and shows the humanistic brushstrokes of Chinese writers. This gave effective spiritual inspiration to a large number of people in poverty in the United States after the war.

The success of Ivan King's translation in the United States in the 1940s was accompanied by a betrayal of the original language and cultural habits. But this absence is not permanent. The deleted content and language style of RickshawBoy were gradually supplemented in the subsequent English translation of Shoko the Camel.

In 1979, 1981 and 2010, the United States published translations by Jane James, Shi Xiaojing and Ge Haowen respectively, and from the James translation, the translation style gradually abandoned the pandering to the mainstream concept of the United States. From Ge Haowen's translation, it can be clearly seen that the translation can be close to the Chinese cultural characteristics and spiritual connotations expressed in the original work. These four English translations of "Camel Xiangzi" span more than sixty years in time. Obviously, the process and effect of such continuous foreign translation deserve our attention. The earliest translations lowered the threshold for foreign readers to understand the work and sparked their interest in reading. Subsequent translations have gradually increased their difficulty, allowing foreign readers to gradually enter the spiritual world of Chinese culture.

This continuous process of occupying the literary market first and then gradually penetrating has laid the foundation for presenting a three-dimensional and multi-angle Chinese literary culture. When we take into account the uniqueness of cross-cultural communication and the very complex connotation of Chinese literature, we can see that in the translation process, it is difficult for a single translation to take into account the reader's acceptance and a complete grasp of all the spiritual core, cultural characteristics, and artistic presentation implicit in the text, and such a continuous foreign translation process can make up for this. Therefore, when we spread Chinese culture and tell Chinese stories today, we may as well consider it as a systems project. Translations with different emphases can play different roles in different historical periods, and when they are superimposed, they can present a richer and more complete world of texts.

The success of Ivan King's translation of Xiangzi the Camel laid the foundation for the subsequent translation and acceptance of this modern Chinese masterpiece in the United States, the Western world, and even the world. The translations of Shoko the Camel published in French, German, Japanese and other countries also refer to the English translation to varying degrees. It can be said that the road of foreign translation and introduction of the classic Chinese novel "Camel Xiangzi" is a run-in paradigm in the process of modern Chinese literature going out, which has historical inevitability. The cultural "resonance" emphasized and highlighted by the translations of different periods, and the spiritual "empathy" with readers of different eras, are precisely the portrayal of the process of China's literature gradually reshaping cultural symbols in the forest of world culture. In this sense, the acceptance and research of foreign readers of "Camel Xiangzi" not only has reference value for the study of the translation of literary works, but also has research value for the external construction of the overall appearance of Chinese literature.

Guangming Daily (November 16, 2021, 11th edition)

Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily