(The aesthetic translation in "Angel Amelie", like Liu Yong's words "This past year, should be a good day and a good scene")
Talk about the three translations of The Old Man and the Sea
Author: Li Jihong, scholar and translator, has translated "The Little Prince", "The Old Man and the Sea", "The Great Gatsby", "The Moon and Sixpence", "The Kite Chaser" and so on.
As the fifth American writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, Hemingway's work has historically been extremely popular around the world, and Chinese mainland is no exception. The most widely known and best-selling of this "lost generation" is of course "The Old Man and the Sea", such as "The Old Man and the Sea" of Shanghai Translation Publishing House, which can sell tens of thousands of copies every year in amazon and dangdang online bookstores alone. And so it is: Although there are only two domestic publishers authorized by the Hemingway Foreign Copyright Foundation, if you go to Amazon, you will find that there are as many as thirty or so versions in stock and available for sale. [Editor's Note: "There are only two publishing houses" here refers to the translation of Zhang Ailing of Today World Publishing House (Hong Kong) and the translation of Wu Lao of Shanghai Translation Publishing House, followed by the Yu Guang Chinese translation of Yilin Publishing House and the translation of Zhang Ailing of Beijing October Literature and Art Publishing House. 】
The Old Man and the Sea, by Hemingway, translated by Wu Lao, Shanghai Translation Publishing House
Recently, the "Old Man and the Sea" has added another member of the prosperous translation family, that is, the Yuguang Chinese translation launched by Yilin Publishing House. It is said to be new, but according to the preface to the translation, the translation was completed as early as the beginning of 1953, and in 1957, the traditional chinese version was published by Chongguang Literature and Art; this time the simplified version was launched by Yilin, and Yu Guangzhong "greatly corrected ... The whole book should be changed in more than a thousand places" (p. 4). Mr. Yu seems to be more humble, claiming that his original translation "can get seventy points", as for how many points this translation that has changed "more than a thousand places" can get, he did not mention it, but only said lightly that "the new translation knows the trade-offs, and it is much smoother to read."
The Old Man and the Sea, by Hemingway, translated by Yu Guangzhong, translated by Lin Publishing House
Considering that Mr. Yu is well-known on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, his representative poem "Nostalgia" is almost a household name, and he also writes "On Translation in YuGuang", singing and harmonizing with Mr. Cai Maotang (Si Guo), as if he has the form of a guiding light in the translation industry, his translation should be accurate and elegant at the same time, as he expected in the book on translation, to become a model of English and Chinese literary translation. But unfortunately, judging from the translation of employment that has been paid, readers may inevitably have the feeling that "under the fame, it is actually difficult to match".
Page 2 of this translation, which has been changed from "more than a thousand places", has obvious omissions. At the beginning of the novel, the boy intends to invite the old man to a drink, so he says, "Can I offer you a beer on the Terraceand then we'll take the stuff home." (Quoted from Scribner's Sons' original book published in 1965, p. 11, page numbers only are indicated below.) The translation given by Mr. Yu is: "I invite you to have a beer on the platform, okay?" After drinking, we will take these things back. ”
The Terrace in the book is actually a bar, and its prototype is the La Terraza bar in Cohimar Bay, Havana. The place is now a local attraction and many visitors who love The Old Man and the Sea love to visit in memory of Hemingway. Here Mr. Yu seems to regard the proper noun Terrace with capitalization as a generic noun terrace, so it will be mistranslated. The translations of Zhang Ailing (Today World Publishing House, first edition in January 1972, hereinafter referred to as Zhang Translation) and Wu Lao (Shanghai Translation Publishing House, 1st edition in August 2006, 10th printing in April 2010, hereinafter referred to as Wu Translation) were respectively translated as "Terrace Hotel" and "Terrace Hotel".
The Old Man and the Sea, by Hemingway, translated by Zhang Ailing, Beijing October Literature and Art Publishing House
Since this terrace bar is the most important specific location in the novel, Mr. Yu's inadvertent negligence leads to a series of chain reactions, followed by such a puzzling translation:
The boy brought the food in a double-layered metal box from the platform. He had two pairs of knives, forks and spoons in his bag, each wrapped in a napkin made of paper.
"Who gave it to you?"
"Boss Martin." (page 10)
Because Mr. Yu mistranslated the terrace bar as "platform", the "Martin boss" in the back is particularly abrupt. Both Zhang Ailing and Wu Lao's translations translate the last sentence as: "Martin." That boss. "This way the reader will know that Martin is the owner of the terrace bar without feeling confused."
If the above mistake is due to negligence, then another mistake should be attributed to Mr. Yu's unfamiliarity with the Caribbean region. After the old man and the boy had a beer at the bar, they moved the fishing gear back to the old man's shack, and then the boy asked the old man what to eat for dinner, and the old man replied, "A pot of yellow rice with fish." (p. 16 of the original book) Mr. Yu translated it as: "A jar of brown rice mixed with fish." (p. 7)
Stills from The Old Man and the Sea
Rice certainly has the meaning of rice, but how can rice and fish be swallowed? And hello rice is not brown rice, it is a common dish in the Caribbean, similar to Southeast Asian curry fried rice or Yangzhou fried rice in the Yangtze River Delta region, the main raw material is also rice, but the added ingredient is saffron or annatto seed squeezed oil, so it is yellow. In order to increase nutrition and improve taste, local people often add chicken, fish and other ingredients to yellow rice. Wu translates: "There is a pot of fish boiled yellow rice." Zhang translated: "A pot of yellow rice, eat it with fish." Although they are a little different from the original text, they are not outrageous from Mr. Yu Guangzhong's translation and are still within the acceptable range.
Surprisingly, there was another apparent mistranslation on the last line of the same page. Let's first look at what the original text was written: "I'll be back when I have the sardines. I will keep yours and mine together on the ice and we can sharethem in the morning.” (Original, p. 17) Mr. Yu translates as: "I got the sardines and came back." I'll ice yours with mine, and I'll eat them together tomorrow morning. (p. 7)
Both the previous and later narratives, Hemingway makes it clear to the reader that these sardines are not meant to be eaten, but as bait. Mr. Yu was a professor of foreign languages at Sun Yat-sen University in Taiwan for fifteen years, and with his English attainments, it is absolutely impossible to understand this meaning, why he can translate in this way, it is really puzzling. The last half of the sentence Wu translates: "Ming'er can be used separately in the morning." (p. 10) Zhang translates as: "We can be half a man in the morning." (p. 8) None of them mistakenly used bait for rations.
Hemingway in fishing
In Mr. Yu's translation of The Old Man and the Sea, such errors are not uncommon. For example, on page 18 there is a sentence: "He crossed the surface of the so-called great current of the fisherman and saw the phosphorus flash of phosphorus in the 'bay grass' in the water; the seabed fell seven hundred times, and the gulf stream crashed into the cliffs on the seabed, forming a whirlpool, so all kinds of fish gathered here." Even leaving aside the strange expression of "ocean noodles" (commonly used in Chinese, "sea surface") and the strange word "bay grass", it is difficult for the reader to understand the connection between the words before and after the semicolon, and why did Hemingway, who was extremely concerned about the use of words, write this strange sentence? Let's take a look at the original text first:
He saw the phosphorescence of the Gulf weedin the water as he rowed over the part of the ocean that the fishmen called the great well because there was a sudden deep of seven hundred fathoms where all sorts of fish congregated because of the swirl the current made against the steep walls of the floor of the ocean.（原著，第28页）
For the sake of discussion, I will first translate this sentence into Chinese: "He saw phosphorescence, which was the sargassum in the water, and the sea surface he crossed at this time was called 'big well' by the fisherman, because it suddenly became very deep, there were seven hundred of them, and all kinds of fish gathered here because of the whirlpool formed by the currents of water hitting the steep rock walls on the seabed." ”
Mr. Yu mistaken "Big Well" for "Great Current", and the words that explained the name in the back of it of course seemed very abrupt, so that this compound sentence composed of a double cause clause was no longer hierarchical and interlocking, but became two sub-sentences that could not be seen to have any connection before and after. In contrast, putting gulf weed incorrectly (or should it be called "creatively"?) Translated as "bay grass" is less important.
There are many similar errors in Mr. Yu's translation, so I will not discuss them all here. If there are only these omissions or errors caused by misreading, it may also be called flawed, because it is difficult to translate a book that is completely error-free. After all, translators are easily disturbed by the outside world in the process of work, such as answering a phone call, or being called downstairs by their wives for tea, which may affect the understanding of the words and sentences being translated. But the problem with this translation is that its reproduction of the original style is almost entirely a failure, as are the translations of Wu Lao and Zhang Ailing, although their errors are relatively rare. This is precisely the difficulty of translating classic literature: it is not that every word of the original text can be accurately translated by reading it.
Taking the sentence just mentioned as an example, Wu Lao's translation is:
He paddled to a certain part of the water in the sea, and saw the phosphorescence of the fruit sac sargassum, which the fishermen called "the big well", because the depth of the water suddenly reached seven hundred, and the current slammed on the cliffs of the abyss on the seabed, stirring up whirlpools, where all kinds of fish gathered. (Wu translation, p. 21)
Zhang Ailing's translation is:
He saw the seagrass of the Gulf of Mexico glowing phosphorescent in the water, and at that time he was paddling into the sea, a place that fishermen called the "big well", because it was suddenly as deep as seven hundred, and all kinds of fish gathered there, because the current rushed to the cliffs on the bottom of the sea, stirring up whirlpools. (Zhang Yi, p. 18)
On the surface, there does not seem to be an obvious error in the translations of the two, although the translations are different, but the meaning of the expression is generally the same. Can they be called good translations? The answer is no.
The difference between a literary master and an ordinary writer is that the former's layout and sentence construction are all the result of careful deliberation, and the translator often has to think hard to fully understand his or her writing intentions. When the old man went out to sea, it was not yet light, so he could not see gulf weed, only phosphorescence. As a local fisherman who has been in the wind and waves, the old man saw the phosphorescence, of course, he knew that it was sent by sargasso, and the appearance of sargasso means that he rowed the boat to the sea of "Big Well". The old man knew that there were many fish in the "big well", but he decided to go to the open sea to catch the big fish, which reinforced the tragic color of the whole book. In simple terms, the order of the four keywords of phosphorescence, gulf weed, great well, and all sorts of fish cannot be changed, otherwise it would be contrary to the reality constructed in the book. In this respect, both Wu Lao's and Zhang Ailing's translations are untrue, even if they have not misunderstood every word of the original text. It's like painting a portrait of a person, painting the nose on the eyes, although the nose and eyes are drawn correctly, but this cannot be called a good portrait.
But the hard part of literary translation is that even if the translator fully understands the author's intentions, there are always some difficulties that cannot be overcome. Or take this sentence as an example, is it not correct to deal with the order of the above four keywords, which can be called a perfect translation? Obviously not.
Perhaps the attentive reader has long since discovered that the sentence is long and clearly inconsistent with Hemingway's trademark "telegraph style" style. In fact, the average length of each sentence in the original "The Old Man and the Sea" is about 14.7 words, and it is 60 words long, which is four times the average length.
The typical sentence in the original book goes like this: "The old man went out the door and the boy came after him." (Original, p. 26) The first two sentences of this long sentence are shorter: "Sometimes someone would speak in a boat. But most of the boats were silent except for the dip of the oars.” (Original, p. 28) This writing technique is stylistically known as "internal deviation," and its function is to reinforce a certain atmosphere or mood of the characters in the work through stylistic mutations.
Hemingway in Writing
For example, here, although Hemingway did not describe the mood of the old man, this complex, information-intensive sentence is like a war drum, successfully conveying the tense atmosphere of the imminent war, which can really be described as "without a word, as far as the wind flowed". Due to the ontological differences in language structure, modern Chinese lacks the same form of expression, and it is difficult for translators to find appropriate long sentences to convey this stylistic subtlety, so readers can see that whether it is Yu Guangzhong, Wu Lao, or Zhang Ailing, they all have to use a number of disconnected short sentences to convert the original text of this long sentence without punctuation, although they are well-known poets, translators and writers, although their Chinese writing ability should undoubtedly be at the upper middle level.
But then again, it is precisely because of this untranslatable aspect of literary translation that translators should interpret the original text more carefully and strive to convey the meanings that can be translated in their entirety. Regrettably, Mr. Yu Guangzhong does not seem to have done so, as can be seen in a simple, but not unimportant, example.
At the beginning of the novel, Hemingway describes the old man's sails this way: "it looksed like the flag of permanent defeat" (original, p. 9) And then he describes the old man's eyes as follows: "They were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated" (original, p. 10) These two sentences, although very simple, But they use a pair of antonyms (defeat and undefeated)
It sets the tone of the book: although the old man is destitute, everything about his appearance (symbolized by the sails) shows that he is a loser, but his spirit (symbolized by the eyes) is never defeated and invincible.
Hemingway manuscript with the World War I Medal
In fact, Hemingway won the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature in large part because of "The Old Man and the Sea"; "The Old Man and the Sea" was favored by the judges in Stockholm, in large part because it swept away the pessimistic atmosphere of the post-World War II European and American literary scene, and issued an optimistic cry in a majestic and masculine tone: "But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destoyed, but not defeated.” (Original, p. 103, meaning "but good men are not born for failure.") Good men can be destroyed, but they cannot be defeated. As Anders Osterling of the Swedish Academy put it in his speech at that year's award ceremony: "The story is an ode to the spirit of struggle that never yields even if the result is nothing, and to celebrate the moral triumph in the midst of failure." ”
The dualistic opposition embodied in the above two antonyms is ubiquitous in the book, and it is an indispensable element of Hemingway's construction of this optimistic tendency, most obviously the old man who seems to be transformed into two bodies when fishing at sea, and the words he says to himself and the silent thinking in his heart are completely opposite. But Mr. Yu Guangzhong's translation of these two sentences is as follows:
It's like a flag of defeat. (page 1)
His eyes were the same color as the sea, lively and determined. (page 1)
Readers can see that the strong contrast in the original text has been dissolved by Mr. Yu without a trace. Wu Lao translated the latter sentence as follows: "They are as blue as the sea, and they appear to be happy and do not accept defeat." (Wu translation, p. 4) also can not reproduce the deep meaning of the original text. Zhang Ailing's translation of this sentence is not satisfactory: "The eyes and the sea are one color, very pleasant, and have not been defeated." (Zhang Translation, p. 2) However, the use of "never defeated" to describe the eyes seems a little strange.
Zhang ailing
In zhang Ailing and Wu Lao's translations, readers can see everywhere a kind of mistake that novice translators are prone to: never forget to translate indefinite articles. For example, the first sentence of the novel, the original text is as follows:
He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.（原著，第9页）
Zhang Ailing, who enjoys a godmother's reputation among literature lovers at home and abroad, who wrote Chinese, actually translated it as: "He is an old man, a man rowing a small boat in the Gulf of Mexico to fish, and he has not caught a single fish for eighty-four days." (Zhang Translation, p. 1)
Hemingway had always cherished words like gold, and he hated words, and if he had Chinese, it was hard to imagine that he would write novels like this. The words "one", "one", "one" and "one" in Zhang Ailing's translation can be completely deleted, in fact, it can be translated as follows: "He is an old man, rowing a small boat alone, fishing in the Gulf Stream, and for eighty-four days, he has not caught fish." As for Mr. Yu Guangzhong's translation, the translator's poetic style is completely invisible, and the reader will even see the phrase "the sun is sunny" (p. 3) and the phrase "the bed is stacked and the house is stacked" (p. 3).
It is also worth mentioning that in the original text, when Hemingway referred to the big fish with pronouns, he always used the anthropomorphic human pronoun he and its variants (including him and his. Hemingway's intention in writing this is obvious, because the old man in the book repeatedly refers to the big fish as his "friend" and "brother". But Yu Guangzhong, Wu Lao, and Zhang Ailing invariably translated the pronoun "it." What is the reason for this, it is really difficult to think.
All in all, neither the latest edition of The Forest, the best-selling translation on the market, nor the world edition that has been out of print for many years is not the ideal translation of The Old Man and the Sea. Since Hemingway committed suicide in his Idaho apartment in 1961, according to the Berne International Copyright Convention, from 2011 onwards, domestic publishing houses can justifiably translate and publish the works of this 20th-century literary master without the authorization of hemingway Foreign Copyright Foundation, and I believe that "The Old Man and the Sea" will be published in different new translations.
One more translation is always a good thing, because it means that the reader has one more choice. The average reader's only hope may be that the new translator can carefully refer to the original translation and avoid the mistakes made by the predecessors as much as possible; or the new translator does not care to stand on the shoulders of the predecessors, then at least the responsible editor should take this responsibility. In the case of Mr. Yu Guangzhong's translation, if the editor compares it with other translations when reviewing the manuscript, low-level errors such as "platform", "brown rice mixed fish", and "great stream" can certainly be avoided. If this little hope is made true, it will be a blessing for those readers who will see the new translation in the future.
This article was first published in the Oriental Morning Post Shanghai Book Review
This article is excerpted from
Ten Classic Lectures
Author: Li Jihong
Publisher: Zhejiang Literature and Art Publishing House
Producer: Fruit and wheat culture
Publication year: 2021-7
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