Haomet (left) with the Mai family
Xu Baofeng: Chatting with the Mai family a few days ago, he said that you translated his "Decryption", and just finished translating "Life Sea sea" and began to translate "The Sound of the Wind", which is very emotional. Why do you like the Mai family so much?
Haomet: Because the Mai family told me that I am Hao Maite, he is the Mai family, I like him, but it is destined in the "name". A joke is half true, I also specifically looked up the word "wheat", ancient Chinese regarded "wheat" as a gift from heaven, came to the human world to make food. It seems that my acquaintance with the Mai family is quite fateful. We first met in April 2019, at the Tehran International Book Fair China Guest of Honor series of activities, the Mai family attended the premiere of the Persian version of "Decryption". It was the mai family's first visit to Iran, and "Decryption" was also the first Chinese novel I translated.
The Persian version of Deciphered
Translating this novel is also a wonderful fate. At that time, I happened to attend the book fair in Beijing and came across our Iranian publishing house. They said that the Mai family was good, the people and works were very good, and recommended me to translate his "Decryption". In fact, before that, I had watched the TV series "Decryption" in China. I don't want to watch it every day, I have to endure it, grab it up and watch it. This opportunity to translate is like a gift, surprising and precious. Mai jia's book, it is said that it was written for 11 years, it was rejected 17 times, I felt hot in my heart when I held it in my hand, how to translate it! I have been translating this book intently for several years, and I hope to translate the classics into classics, to live up to his 11 years of hard work and to live up to the expectations of Iranian readers. During the translation, I have always maintained correspondence with the Mai family, and I have also constantly outlined his image and experienced his psychological state through the characters he has created in his novels, the beliefs and thoughts conveyed by his language, and the temperament between the lines in the letters.
I am the reader first, and then the translator. What is the reader? It is the person who works together with the writer. What about translators? It is the condition that makes this possible possible. I remember Mai Jia saying at the press conference, "This novel is not complete until the reader opens the world in the book with his eyes" - his sense of purpose is very clear. His books, written for all possible readers, have in mind people from different cultural backgrounds, and specific people. Then, the direction of exploration is different, the spearhead points to the composition of individual fate, to the analysis of the complex synergy of individual fate and the characteristics of the times; the political and historical events of the special period have become a thick and transparent background, supporting the story and not turning others away. Therefore, his works have national personality and epochality, but there is no time, space and regional barrier. In the "invitation" to the reader, he was very proactive. This is also what I feel directly when I translate: it is not he himself or the publisher who invites me to translate, but his work that speaks and asks me to translate.
It is no accident that "Declassified" has been translated into more than 30 languages and included in the Penguin Classic Library. There is a view that the Mai family is popular because of the genre advantage of secret service novels, which I think is not entirely true. "Declassified", including "The Sound of the Wind", which I am translating, is not a Hollywood novel, not to mention the "Sea of Life" that I just finished translating. Mai Jia thinks in the story, "suspense" is his thinking tool, he uses encryption to decrypt, but also use decryption to encrypt, no matter what kind of answer the reader adds, the novel is unfinished. So, for the reader, what he feels is always an endless "drawer"—this is the pain point of fate and the hope, the so-called "sea"—just like he quoted Roman Rolland as "heroism" in "Life Sea Sea". The charm of the Mai family is here.
Xu Baofeng: Compared with "Decryption" and "The Sound of the Wind", "Life Sea and Sea" does have a stylistic transformation, although it continues to write suspensefully, but the scope of writing is different, gradually extending to the countryside and to his own childhood. The book is very popular in China, exceeding 2 million copies in less than two years, becoming a myth that is difficult to replicate in the Chinese book market in recent years. What do you think of its "encounter" in Iran?
Holmitt: It can create another "myth." The book "Life Sea Sea", Mai Jia wrote for 5 years, before he started writing, he probably did not write for 3 years. When I was translating, I always had his "blank" three years in my heart. For more than a thousand days, what was he thinking, what was he looking for, and what did he finally feel, so that he could stick his pen out of the "dark box" and visit what he was secretive about? For the average reader, a novel, no matter how thick, may always be a little "thin"; but for the translator, this 300-plus-page novel is extraordinaryly thick, because it requires you to crush each word, extract the juice, and put it into the author's survival path and my own cultural background to reintegrate. This process is a test between the author and the translator, and I need to understand what the writing of this work means to the Mai family himself, and how it will touch the Iranians. As a "transformational" work, the appeal of "transformation" itself is only a continuation of the inertia of the popularity of his previous works, but I know that it is wrapped in a new motor, and it does not need to eat the old book. Mai Jia made a decision in 3 years, and he decided to face the problems posed by morality and fate. Rather, Iranian readers have been waiting since then, until my translation is published this year to feel the power of this decision. The anticipation accumulated over so many years, the energy is very powerful.
"The Sea of Life" deals with a psychosocial underlying problem, namely moral dilemmas. In this regard, iranian society, or the entire Eastern society, feels stronger than the West and is more likely to resonate on a large scale. The "grandfather" in the novel is a very representative "moral person", his personality and behavior make me feel very familiar, he has a kind of pure heart sincerity about morality, and thus becomes the "invisible hand" that shapes the fate of other characters. But morality itself is a joke on him--this is not to say that there is anything wrong with virtue, but that there is a confrontation between the uneven sequences of morality in different dimensions of existence, and sincerity is so sincere that it is easy to connect life into a dilemma and reveal the tragic tone of fatalism. You can't criticize his actions, you can't even sympathize, but you will understand, you will turn this understanding into your own cultural context, and think more objectively than ever before. This is the strength of the Mai family, quietly taking readers around the society of China at that time, and bringing them back to the society in which they are now.
"Face like a peaceful lake, there is thunder in his heart", this is what he used to describe Aunt Lin, I think it is not too much to use on himself. This huge tension is reflected in the "colonel", in terms of character setting, he is a "eunuch" or even a "slave" who is "raised" by the enemy, but he is also a "forgivener" and even a "savior", which is an oriental interpretation of "heroism". His last madness, there is an irresistible fate, there is also a compassion after the release, in short, you can't swallow, a long sigh can't spit out, forcing you to sink into thinking. I always tell my students that translating literature is a "bitter heart" thing. After translating "Life Sea", I couldn't tell the students that "bitterness" was still too superficial, and he wouldn't even let you say "bitterness". Such a work, which is not popular in Iran, is impossible. However, Iran still has to wait, because the English version of "Life Sea sea" has not yet been translated, and I have finished translating persian first, waiting for the English version to come out first. To make the reader wait is also to charge.
Xu Baofeng: So, your "Life Sea" will become an intermediary in the English-speaking world. Translators undertake the hub of several "lines of communication", not only commercial, linguistic, but also cultural and aesthetic, more fundamental, perhaps psychological, spiritual. I've read Ferdosi's The Age of Kings, enjoyed Sadie's The Garden of Roses and Hafez's lyrics, and of course watched a lot of Iranian films, such as Majid Majidi's Little Shoes, Asha Farhati's A Parting And Past. Last year, his "A Hero" also represented Iran in the 94th Academy Award for Best International Film.
Holmitt: I just went to the cinema last month to see this movie, and suddenly I felt a sense of familiarity: this "hero" is very much like the colonel in "The Sea of Life". Both works are about the emergence and fall of a "hero", Mai Jia and Ashar. Farhati had to put the "hero" and the "villain" on the fate of the same character, peeling it off for people to see. Cruel, but back to the beauty of the waves. "Hero" is a "moral proposition", that is, only in moral dilemmas do "heroes" appear. So, the tone of "heroism" is fatalistic and tragic. At the same time, after you reflect, you can see the final code of fate, which is like the "sea and sea" that the Mai family has encrypted in a decrypted way- the waves are magnificent and boundless, and you can see the truth of the terrifying waves, which is the incessant love. Heroism is the belief that forces tragedy to shine, and that light is the intrinsic power of tragedy to achieve cross-cultural aesthetic empathy. If you go to see "A Hero", you will also watch "Life Sea", and your inner feelings are illuminated by the other party. Translation is to light a candle.
Xu Baofeng: After "lighting up", you can not only see the "ghost", but also see the shining waves that are shaking outside, which is probably the harvest of comparative literature: not to seek common ground while reserving differences, but to complement each other on the contrary.
Holmitt: That's a more interesting topic. While watching "A Hero," I thought about comparing the "Colonel" in "The Sea of Life" with the "hero" in the film, and see how people in the two countries viewed such a "hero" in such a state of existence. This is the comparison of cultural psychology, which allows us to see "differences", and because of the understanding and respect of differences in thinking in common concerns, then intercultural dialogue becomes natural. With a flat mind, you can see how the opposite things are formed, so that there can be "complementarity" to speak of.
The two "cats" of the Colonel in "The Sea of Life" are things that are not in the movie, and as a symbol or metaphor, the "cats" fascinate me. I'm not talking about the animal or its image itself, and you know that in Persian mythology or allegorical tradition, cats really don't count as faceless things. However, the "cat" of the Mai family made me see more possibilities: it represents life itself, common sense, and the self-sufficiency of daily secular life. You can say that this is moral self-improvement, not in collusion with absurd ideas, and you can say that it is immoral indifference and insensitivity. But just because you know what morally imprisoned colonels and people who are being used by ideas to go crazy really lack, you value everyday life and worldly common sense even more. It is neither noble nor shameless, but something else outside of morality, on which one can see how moral dilemmas are formed. The protagonist of "The Sea of Life" is not the Colonel, but his cat. I always felt that this cat had a kind of "heaven and earth without mercy", so the colonel went back to the countryside for it. Of course, this is still attachment. When he went crazy, this attachment would be gone, he no longer knew his cat, and even if Aunt Lin taught him to raise cats, he couldn't learn it. But he raised silkworms, and he raised them incomparably well. He really returned to life, and he became his cat, and he didn't have to keep a cat anymore.
Xu Baofeng: This understanding may not be captured by most Persian readers. It needs a rich cultural background to support it.
Holmitt: Right. Therefore, I often tell my students that the Chinese contemporary novel is indeed very "trendy", but it all has roots, and this root is in the tradition of Chinese culture. If you do not go deep into the depths of Chinese culture and its philosophical background, it is not translated well, and your own appreciation is not addictive, and it is even more difficult for readers to taste the thick taste. Translation is never just a matter of language, you have to make yourself like the sea, in order to translate the taste of life's "sea". Therefore, the Chinese education and Chinese culture teaching and research in the college need to grow simultaneously; Chinese literature is huge, so it is indispensable to organize translation associations and stimulate the power of many translators; Chinese contemporary literature is on the rise, good writers and good works emerge in an endless stream, and we foreign translators quite need projects such as "classical translation", just like I saw the line of words printed on the wall behind you, "cultural translation, communication with the world", the role of translation is exactly like this. My translation of "Declassified" has been reprinted three times, and I am full of confidence in "The Sea of Life", and the same is true for "The Sound of the Wind". Not only the Mai family, Jia Pingwa, Chen Zhongzhong, these outstanding Contemporary Chinese writers have gathered, and gradually a trend will form in Iran, because you and we are all working hard to spread culture, to cross-cultural spiritual dialogue, and to communicate with the world.
(Xu Baofeng is a professor and doctoral supervisor of Beijing Language and Culture University)