"I opened the window wide. The summer air flowed in through the windowsill, hazy and silky, as if coming from another world. I did my research, immersed in the illusion of pure numbers. ”
"Like a sleepwalker, I woke up to find myself in a garden, shrouded in strange light, surrounded by eyeless statues, and I felt confused and distressed, reminiscing about interrupted dreams. Everything there is so harmonious, the chaos has been tamed, and what is broken has become complete. There, somehow, I was no longer alone. Oh, I do my research. ”
The above passage is from the novel The Seducer by Irish writer John Banville. The translator of the book is Jin Xiaoyu, the "genius son" who has attracted public attention in recent days.
Title: The Seducer
Author: John Banville (Ireland).
Translator: Jin Xiaoyu
Publisher: Nanjing University Publishing Co., Ltd.
Published: 2013-11
The novel unfolds in the form of Swann's self-narration, bounded by a fire caused by a subsidence in a "big house", and is divided into two parts.
John Banville was known for his mastery of language, and critics generally agreed that the language of his novels resembled prose poems. For native English speakers, this makes for a wonderful reading experience, but for translators, it is no small challenge. Jin Xiaoyu's translation is accurate, elegant and direct to the heart. Before he entered the public eye, some netizens praised the book's excellent translation on Douban.
Now, as the story behind the translator Jin Xiaoyu is known to the public, in addition to the shock, when we go back to read the novel "The Seducer" translated by Jin Xiaoyu, we will find that the original lonely mathematical genius Gabriel Swan in the book is also Jin Xiaoyu himself to some extent.
For Jin Xiaoyu, the "seducer" Felix in the book is an incurable illness, a helplessness that has repeatedly fallen behind, and a blow to the death of a loved one. But unlike the deviation of the mathematician Swann, Jin Xiaoyu has been silently bearing all the hardships of life for so many years, learning a variety of foreign languages by himself, and becoming an obscure communicator behind several literary works.
The best way to get to know a translator is to walk into his translations. Today, we choose to return our attention and focus to Jin Xiaoyu's work itself, in his translation and brush, to taste this lonely but unworldly soul. This is probably also the original intention of Jin Xiaoyu's father, The Elderly Jin Sexyong, to ask the media for help. In addition to the "Seducer" mentioned at the beginning of the article, the Tianmu book list also selects five other works translated by Jin Xiaoyu, so that everyone can have a more comprehensive understanding of his translation career.
Born in 1972, Jin Xiaoyu has been engaged in translation for more than 20 years. His translations cover a wide range of fields, including fiction, literary theory, and art. His English translations include "Ship Fever", "Seducer", "Writing Life", "Hip Hop This Business", "The Best Seat in the Theater" and "The History of Rock and Roll in Ten Songs"; the Japanese translation of Chinese books include "Dog Son-in-law Comes to the Door", "Diary of Walking with Language", "Flying Soul" and "Silk Road Chronicle".
Title: Andrey Tarkovsky: Elements of Cinema
Author: (U.S.) Robert Bird
Published: 2018-6
Synopsis
In Robert Bird's case, Tarkovsky's films were no longer obscure and became engaging puzzle games. At the entrance to Tarkovsky's cinematic world, Tarkovsky's main film works are detailed — Ivan's Childhood, Andrei Rublev, Solaris, The Mirror, Stalker, Nostalgia, and Sacrifice, pointing out that Tarkovsky's films are based on an examination or celebration of the four basic elements of earth, fire, water, and air, and that the elements of cinema are inseparable from the sense of unity of time that nurtures possibilities, and that cinema reinforces this sense of unity in the human experience. In Tarkovsky's films, it is the elements of cinema that allow the elements of nature to exist. The book is extensive and informative, with more than 100 precious images and a long guide to the book.
Excerpts from wonderful translations
The poet Boris Pasternak, in his memoirSy By the Rules, recounts how he gave up his musical career because, unlike his mentor Alexander Scriabin, he lacked perfect pitch discernment. About fifty years later, the young Andrei Tarkovsky, himself an avid lover of Pasternak poetry, similarly gave up music and eventually chose film as his profession. He could never explain what had drawn him to film. It was here, however, that Tarkovsky discovered his own form of perfect pitch discernment, manifested in unmistakable aesthetic sensitivity and a keen response to cultural impulses, which made each of his seven feature films resonate in the Soviet Union and around the world as major cultural events.
Title: "Dog Son-in-Law Comes to the Door"
Author: [Japanese] Tawada Leaf
Publisher: Henan University Press
Published: 2018-3
This book contains "The Dog Son-in-Law Comes to the Door" and "The Mask". The eponymous work of "Dog Son-in-Law Comes to the Door" examines the folklore-style world hidden in the city from a new perspective. In the ordinary town along the Tama River, there is a cram school called "Kitamura Juku" that is popular with children. Kitamura Mizuko told them the story of "dog son-in-law coming to the door", and it turned out that there was really a "dog man" who came uninvited, and she and this person named Taro began a wonderful two-person life. The book won the "Wasagawa Prize".
In the process of translation, many translators often erase the strangeness brought by different languages in order to pursue Chinese fluency. Jin Xiaoyu's unique and deliberate sense of stagnation retains the edges and corners of the folds of the two languages, which is much the true meaning of Wada leaves to "move forward in the ravine of language".
The afternoon sun shines brightly on the clothes that are dried vertically and horizontally. In the public residential area, on this day in July, there was no trace of wind, and in this damp and suffocating air, an old man walked alone, suddenly stopped in the middle of the road, turned his head to look at the oblique rear, and stood still. Then, a small car of brick and red colored, as if it had no strength, stopped next to the mailbox, not only did no one come down from it, but also did not know whether it was the cry of the cicadas that were dying, or the sound of the machines in the food service center, in short, except for the low chirping sound from afar, the time was two o'clock in the afternoon.
Title: The Crow (Series Title: Watchmen, Creatures)
Author: (American) Boria Sachs
Published: 2019-4
This is a minimalist history of crows, a collection of fantasy stories featuring crows, and a classic that bird lovers can't avoid. It subverts the human stereotype of crows with a rare broad vision. In this black and witty work, what you read is not cold scientific knowledge, but a story full of pictures and texts. In Boria Sachs' pen, crows fly out of ancient myths, out of Shakespeare's plays, from The poetry of Allan Poe, and out of Van Gogh's wheat fields. It's smart, humorous, and true to love. It cannot be tamed by humans, but it bears a wonderful resemblance to humans.
Ovid tells another story in his Chronicles of the Ages, in which the sun god is dissatisfied with his crow-like servants. Apollo prepared a feast for Jupiter, and he sent a raven to collect the spring water. The raven picked up a bowl and flew into the air, when it saw a fig tree full of fruit. The raven swooped down and tasted the figs and found that they were not yet ripe. It sat there and waited until the figs were ripe for a full meal, then remembering the task given to it by the sun god. It picked up a water snake and flew back to Apollo, saying that the snake had blocked the stream. Apollo saw through its lies and announced that the ravens would not drink spring water until the figs on the trees were ripe. That's why the raven's voice is harsh because of thirst. Apollo then placed ravens, bowls, and snakes in the zodiac to remind people of the bird's folly.
Title: Fragments of Time: Memories of Dublin
Author: [Irish] John Banville
Publisher: Nanjing University Publishing Co., Ltd.
Published: 2019-11
Paris to Hemingway is a feast of flow, and the same is true of Dublin to Banville: Joyce, Yeats, Beckett, etc. gather here to find their literary dreams in Dublin. Under the guidance of Banville, a wonderful and unique trip to Dublin was unfolded, returning to the golden age of creation full of literary atmosphere, wandering in the culture, architecture, society, history of Dublin at this time, and the literary dating memory and creation scene of Banville... This is a wandering essay dedicated to literary and artistic youth, roaming literary geography, tracing the secrets of time and passing.
Dublin, of course, is the antithesis of the mundane. Dublin for me, like Moscow in Chekhov's Three Sisters for Irina, is a land of magical promises that my hungry and young soul will always aspire to. I'm luckier than Irina because the journey from Wexford to Dublin is relatively short and I can do as long as I want to go as often as I want. In the impoverished 1950s, the city itself, the real Dublin, was basically a place that was neither attractive nor ugly, but that didn't dampen my vision of it, and even when I was in it, I looked at it so much that ordinary reality kept transforming into extraordinary romance before my eyes.
Title: Writing Life
Author: [English] David Lodge
Published: 2015-5
This book is a collection of literary criticism essays by the famous British novelist and literary critic David Lodge. This book selects several famous Novelists, literary critics, playwrights and even the famous Princess Diana of Wales as the subject of commentary, using their lives and creations as the main clues, to explore the influence of these people on the literary world and society from the second half of the 19th century to the beginning of the 21st century, and also mixed with the author's own interaction with them, and the ongoing friendship with some of them. The book not only reviews the literary achievements of Graham Green, Kingsley Amis and others, but also expresses the author's attitude towards the theories of structuralism, deconstructionism, and postmodernism that have emerged in the literary world in the past hundred years.
Eagleton asserts that we will never return to the naïve state of the pre-emergence of "theory," believing in the transparency of language, or the ideological neutrality of interpretation. In the best case, as a method of critical reading, "theory" takes a secondary reading of literature's reflection on life— one by one, defamiliarizing the object it cares about, causing us to re-examine and appreciate it. But, like all fashion, its novelty and vibrancy must have a deadline, and we are experiencing its decline with no clear indication that something will replace it.
Because of the misfortune of suffering from bipolar disorder in his early years, Jin Xiaoyu was doomed to be unable to have a normal life, and he could only infuse his rich inner world into his translations for a long time.
"My senses are lost, but my inner feelings remain. Because Chi Chen could not explain it, dan's heart was hidden behind the book. "Traffic and heat are often fleeting, instead of exploring the personal lives of the Jin family's father and son, it is better to calm down and read Jin Xiaoyu's words that have been tempered by a sincere heart."