Reporter | Intern reporter Li Qing Edit | Lin Zi people
The 13th Fu Lei Translation and Publication Awards 2021 were announced yesterday in Fu Lei's hometown of Zhoupu Town, Pudong, Shanghai, with Zhang Wen winning a social science award for translating Antovana Bellman's book "The Test of The Exotic: Culture and Translation in the German Romantic Period", and Huang Yaqin winning the literary award for translating Marcus Malt's novel "Boy". The "Newcomer Award" was awarded to Wang Xian, the translator of "Return to the Hometown". Dong Qiang, chairman of the Fu Lei Translation and Publication Award Organizing Committee, pointed out that among the 47 works participating in this year's competition, 11 post-90s translators have reached 11, "This is unprecedented." Wu Jialin, chairman of this year's jury, found that the three winners this year are all women when summarizing the judging process, "which may reflect the characteristics of this era." ”
The social science award-winning work "The Test of Exoticism: Culture and Translation in the German Romantic Period" is an archaeological excavation of the translation practice of the German Romantic period, comparing the different translation concepts of French and German translators of the same era, and the translation strategies chosen by the German Romantics who are loyal to the original text and loyal to others have profoundly influenced the later translation activities. Another significance of this book is that the author Bellman successfully rescued translation from the previous situation of "servantization" with the help of his interpretation of theoretical concepts and examples, directly giving birth to an independent discipline of translation research.
Zhang Wen, a translator who has been engaged in translation theory research and practice for a long time, said in her acceptance speech that "translation is the bridge of all knowledge", and then she borrowed the words of the American translation theorist Lawrence Venuti to point out that "translation has always been an invisible profession", although translators have been invisible, but their contributions cannot be ignored.
Literature award winner Huang Yaqin was previously shortlisted for the 2017 Fu Lei Translation and Publication Award for "The Seventh Function of Language", and this time the winning work "Boy" tells the story of the growth of a nameless boy in the early 20th century, and the novel tells the boy's personal story in parallel with the history of all mankind, constructing a unique narrative structure. Huang Yaqin commented on the novel, saying, "The boy's life reflects the life of each of us, in a moment in the long river of human history. She considers the author Marcus's writing "poetic and zen-like," and especially loves the phrase "The boy vaguely feels why he survives, that is: countless disasters and a small amount of joy." ”
The jury, who won the 2016 Framy Prize for Literature, found that its Chinese translation "faithfully embodies the style of The Boy: strong and distinct character emotions, concise words, distinct rhythms, poetic implications, prose arbitrariness, and musical melody and rhythm."
The "Newcomer Award" was won by Wang Xian's translation, Didier Elipon's "Return to The Hometown". This autobiographical form of social reflection reviews the author's life journey from the poor children of the working family to becoming a famous French intellectual, and the reflections on many topics such as social class, school education, and identity building run through it, presenting a very internal and subversive spiritual journey of a critical theory and psychoanalytic scholar. The judges believed that Wang Xian's translation "presents the autobiographical style and rational analysis of the original work very well".
At the end of the award ceremony, the guests discussed the traditional translation standard "Xindaya", Dong Qiang believes that now translation is more pursuit of "letter" and "Da", "Ya" was emphasized in the literary period, and he himself attaches great importance to the "letter" of the translation, that is, faithfully expressing the original meaning. Liu Qing, a specially invited judge in the social science category, pays attention to the relationship between the superficial contradiction between "letter" and "da", and he believes that the most wonderful place in translation lies in the understanding of differences. Nowadays, human beings are so closely linked and so sensitive to each other's differences, but in fact, most of the information is actually being conveyed more and more precisely to each other, and it is precisely in this way that translation reminds us of human commonality. Sun Ganlu, a special invited judge in the literary category, believes that because people always make mistakes and cannot exhaust knowledge, mistakes always exist. Misunderstandings between different cultures are also due to the culture behind them as a dominant force.
Zhang Wen shares the views of Bellman in his translation, whose translation ethics believe that translators need to fully accept and follow others. Starting from his own translation practice, Wang Xian told how he understood didier Eripon's theoretical background and language characteristics, to understand what the author wanted to convey and translate accordingly.
This year's Fu Lei Translation and Publication Award is not only a recommendation for the excellent French translations of the past year, but also another discussion of the award itself. Dong Qiang called the award ceremony to Fu Lei's hometown the meeting of "wings" and "roots". The award ceremony used the documentary "The Life of Fu Lei" to review Fu Lei's transformation from an "art critic" to a "perfectionist" translator, and traced the spirit of the Fu Lei Translation Award. Today, the desire for cultural exchange represented by Fu Lei has grown in the land of Pudong, and the Fu Lei Translation and Publishing Award also encourages latecomers to continue to open up the boundaries of the cultural world created by their predecessors.