Painter and translator Feng Yiyin died in Shanghai on December 11 at the age of 92. Feng Yiyin studied at the National Academy of Fine Arts and graduated from the Russian Language School of the Sino-Soviet Friendship Association in 1953. Since 1961, he has successively served as an interpreter at the Shanghai Compilation Institute and the Shanghai People's Publishing House, and entered the Institute of Literature of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences in 1980. He has co-translated with Feng Zikai the novel "The Story of My Contemporaries" by the Russian writer Korolenko. Feng Yiyin is an important introducer, editor, and researcher of Feng Zikai's translation.
As the young daughter of Feng Zikai, she once said that when she was young, she did not fully understand her father's protective paintings, but in her later years she was completely immersed in her father's art world, sorting out manuscripts and copying paintings, and felt endlessly happy.
Feng Yiyin (1929—2021)
Source and synthesis from: Tianjin Daily
"Wenhui Scholars" here push Feng Yiyin's article "How Do We Translate It?" published in Wen Wei Po in 1956 and 1996. ""The sun and moon are long in the sun and moon building", as a memorial.
How do we translate?
Wen Wei Po 1956.12.29
Feng Yi Yin
My father and I were translating "The Story of My Contemporaries" by the Russian classical writer Korolenko. The book is divided into four volumes. The first volume has been unsubscribed and the second volume is now being translated. From the beginning of the translation to the present, although it is only a short period of more than a year, we have gained a lot of practical experience from it. People often ask about our work and want to hear about our translation experience. But we always feel that there is no way to talk about it. Because in the past, when we translated, we encountered typical examples, and we did not record them at any time, although we knew what we knew, we could not talk about them to others very specifically. When talking about translation experience, we must talk about it concretely, and it is better not to talk about it emptyly. So I had to give up.
[Russian] Korolenko, The Story of My Contemporaries (Volume I)
Feng Zi Kai Feng Yi Yin Translation
People's Literature Publishing House, 1957
I would now like to talk specifically about the way we translate together. This is not a bit of an experience, just a reference for translators.
We co-translated the book, not half of each translation, proofreading each other, but a very close co-translation: each person prepared a copy of the original, sat opposite, and each sentence was discussed by two people, and then I wrote it. When writing "basically" without typing drafts, some people may think that this is laziness, but it is not entirely for this reason. Because the draft must be copied, and there are often omissions in the re-copying, resulting in unjust errors. Our approach is this: generally simpler sentences are written directly into the manuscript; only a few more complex sentences are drafted on another small piece of paper, and when they are corrected, they are transcribed into the manuscript. In this way, the translation can be kept clear and the trouble and error of transcribed sentence by sentence can be avoided.
Before translating, read through the whole book, it goes without saying; I am going to talk about the specific steps when I sit down to translate every day. We first read the sentence to be translated, and then we begin to structure the sentence — a step we call "racking." Simple sentences don't say it, complex sentences are really time-consuming to set up shelves. This is an important step in the translation effort. This is like a sculptor shaping the bones of the human body, which is a basic work. If the shelf is not well set up, it is most likely to affect the quality of the translation, and even affect the expression of the content. Moreover, if you find that it is inappropriate after the type is arranged, if you want to modify it on the proof, you must make a big move, which is the most headache for the typographic comrades. It's not easy to build a shelf, especially when there are several morphological verbs, adverbs, or Kotopblй in sentences, and you have to pre-type the paper.
When building a shelf, there are some adjectives and adverbs in the sentence that can be translated for a while. Wait until the shelves are in place before you consider the words. This step is like a sculptor sculpting muscles on a bone lattice. It's like dressing people and wearing ornaments. As the saying goes, "Buddhas want gold, and people want to dress." "Whether a person looks beautiful or not, in addition to appearance and figure, what is worn also has a lot to do with it. Rhetoric has such an influence on the quality of translations. Once I found that the most common difficulty is the translation of adjectives. After I told my father what I meant, we experimented with it, and sure enough, it did. Every time I put down my pen in contemplation and my father leaned back in his chair and looked out the window at the eighteen-story bungalow in a daze, nine times out of ten I wanted to translate the adjectives. Some adjectives are very familiar, not new words at all, but still have to look up the dictionary, hoping to find an appropriate translation in the dictionary (sometimes can not find, and I came up with one, and I quickly registered it in the dictionary, next time you can apply).
After the individual words are considered and fixed, the sentence is completed and can be written. However, sometimes it is also often necessary to rework it all because one word is inappropriate, and another translation method is used to re-build the shelf.
When there was a difficulty in translation, they took it out and went to consult Soviet teachers, and sometimes even went to ask people from all over the world. This is the most troublesome work, yet the most rewarding. Understand what you don't understand, and this is the real progress.
After translating the whole book, it is the most difficult to read through. Don't interrupt it for too long when reading through, so as not to forget it. The more times this reads through, the better, and the more people read it, the better. Unfortunately, we are often limited to time and do not do very well.
That's how we translate it. I think this translation is much better than half of each translation. As the saying goes, "Three stinky cobblers, one Zhuge Liang." We only have two co-translators, naturally only two-thirds of Zhuge Liang, but it is better than the stinker. It may seem like the time of two people to translate in this way, but in fact it is much faster than two people translating half of each and proofreading each other, because it is easier for two people to negotiate than to think alone.
Based on practical experience over the past year or so, I think that this consultative collective translation method does have its strengths and is worth mentioning. I also hope that translation experts will not hesitate to advise.
"The sun and the moon are long in the sun and moon building"
Wen Wei Po 1996.01.13
More than forty years ago, my father had a period of rich income, my father said: "As soon as there is more money, it will be chirping in the bag, so it must be used." So, through the introduction of a Chinese person named Mrs. Sha, we put together the family's deposits and went down to a small Spanish-style bungalow at No. 93, Lane 39, South Shaanxi Road (also known as Changle Village).
It's a beautiful place to stay. I remember waking up the next day when I just moved in, I saw the blue sky, green trees, and rows of red tile houses, which was really pleasant!
Father lives on the second floor. The second floor has an indoor balcony, and in the middle is a trapezoidal protrusion with both a south window, a southeast and southwest window, and a skylight. It's a sudden departure to have a desk here. What is even more rare is that here you can see the sun infested during the day and the moon at night.
"A good Sun and Moon Building!" The father blurted out, and then gushed out the sentence "The sun and the moon are long in the sun and moon building". Later, Mr. Ma Yifu, a scholar of traditional Chinese medicine in Hangzhou, configured the "Galaxy In the Galaxy Realm" as an upper link, and the book was given to his father, adding a piece of book fragrance to the Sun and Moon Tower, which was spread for a while as a beautiful talk.
Immersed in the sun and moonlight, a clever pen of my father not only gave birth to beautiful flowers, but also produced fruitful fruits. In the Sun Moon Building, my father collaborated with me in translating the Russian writer Korolenko's novel The Story of My Contemporaries, vols. 1-4 (published by the People's Literature Publishing House in 1957-1964). Later, he translated from Japanese the works of Natsume Soseki and Ishikawa Pecking Wood (published by the People's Literature Publishing House in 1958), as well as the world's earliest novel, the Japanese classical masterpiece "The Tale of Genji" (published by the People's Literature Publishing House, 1980-1983), and also wrote dozens of articles and "continuations" of "The Career and Art of snow boats", "Yuanyuantang New Pen", dozens of "continuations", and published "It is difficult to listen to me sing" (China Children's Publishing House, 1957) "Zi Kai Children's Manga" (Zi Kai Children's Manga) Tianjin Children's Publishing House, 1959), Feng Zikai Painting Collection, Nursing Life Painting Collection (Shanghai People's Fine Arts Publishing House, 1963) and so on.
After spending twenty-one spring and autumn in the Sun Moon Tower, my father died unexpectedly in a stormy season, and three years later my family moved out of the Sun Moon Building with my mother. Sun Moon Lou not only left us with the legacy of our father, but also permanently involved our nostalgic feelings. Recently, I occasionally passed by the old house, and saw that when the family raised geese in order to let the geese take a bath, the square pool that my father asked someone to build is still there, and the decadent appearance makes me no longer move my steps, and I can't bear to leave for a long time.
- Selected Translations by Feng Yi yin -
Author: Feng Yiyin
Editor-in-Charge: Junyi Li