Recent photo of Liana Arsovska
Liana partially translated the book shadow
In 1981, 18-year-old Yugoslav girl Leanna Arsovska faced an important life decision - she graduated from high school with honors and received a scholarship for studying abroad provided by her country's Ministry of Education. Where to go? China, the United States or the United Kingdom? Despite not knowing much about China, she blurted out: "I want to go to China." From studying Chinese, teaching Chinese, to writing Chinese grammar books, from translating the leaders of China and Mexico to translating Chinese literary works, in the past few decades, she has grown from a Chinese cultural "xiaobai" to a veritable "China master". In the interview, Liana recalled the past and said with emotion: "Studying in China is the least regrettable thing in my life. ”
Because of "Dream of the Red Chamber", it is related to Chinese culture
"Confucius said, Fifty and knowing the Mandate of Heaven, now I have long passed the year of knowing the Mandate of Heaven. What is my 'Destiny'? I thought it was all about China. Liana said. Indeed, her education, family, translation, and academic careers are inextricably linked to China.
From 1981 to 1985, Liana studied abroad at the Beijing Language Institute, received meticulous care from Chinese teachers, and felt the simplicity, kindness and enthusiasm of Chinese. During her undergraduate studies, she completed her graduation thesis with the title of "Comparison of Female Characters in 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' and 'Dream of the Red Chamber'".
Why choose this topic? Liana recalled: "The first time I came into contact with "Dream of the Red Chamber" was in a Chinese literature class, and with my Chinese level and knowledge reserve at that time, reading "Dream of the Red Chamber" was unusually difficult. In particular, the poems, character relationships, titles, etc. in the book are very difficult to understand, such as who the eldest sister, the second sister, the third sister, and the four girls refer to, and how they call each other. With the deepening of reading, she felt the great charm of "Dream of the Red Chamber" more and more. Liana said: "'Dream of the Red Chamber' is an encyclopedia about Chinese society, and its profound philosophical ideas and the Chinese view of home and country contained in it remind me of Márquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude". Therefore, she conducted a comparative study of these two literary classics of different eras and different regions, specifically discussing the rise and fall of the family, the sense of tragedy, the differences in the equality of female figures such as Jia Mu and Ursula, and analyzing the differences between the two works in terms of long-term and child relationships and love expression. Her thesis enabled these two Chinese and foreign literary classics to achieve dialogue through time and space, laying the foundation for sinology research and literary translation in the next few decades.
While studying in China, Liana also met Roberto, an international student from Mexico, and fell in love with him, married and had children. Today, her youngest son marries a Chinese girl and settles in Xiamen. After graduating from her undergraduate degree, Liana came to Mexico, first as an assistant to professors such as the famous sinologist Bai Peilan at the Mexican Academy, and then became a full teacher of the college and has been teaching ever since.
Apply what you have learned to promote Chinese
With the enhancement of China's comprehensive national strength, Chinese has also become popular in the Spanish-speaking world. At present, 6 Confucius Institutes have been established in Mexico alone. Due to her long-term teaching of Chinese linguistics, Chinese grammar and translation courses, and doing Chinese simultaneous translation for the Mexican government's foreign affairs activities, Liana has accumulated rich experience in Chinese teaching and translation. Feeling the difficulties of Latin Americans learning Chinese, she began editing a Chinese grammar book after 2000. In 2011, the book "Practical Chinese Grammar" came out.
"For learners in Spanish-speaking countries, the 4 tones of Chinese are extremely confusing, and there are many accents. The grammar is also very complex and very different from Spanish. I hope this textbook will be a guide for beginners to Chinese. Liana said.
"Practical Chinese Grammar" introduces Chinese grammar from the perspective of foreigners and is very popular after publication. The biggest feature of the book is to explain the systematic grammar and vocabulary knowledge in vivid sentence examples. The method of explaining Chinese characters in the book is very special, centered on "Tao", each Chinese character is a "Dao", which can produce new meanings through the combination of other words, as well as their use in different contexts and changes in position in sentences. Liana believes that the richness of Chinese character semantics and the flexibility of its use constitute the unique characteristics of Chinese characters and are the biggest difference from Western languages. Through this unique, philosophical approach, students are more likely to understand the differences between Chinese and Western languages.
In addition to her teaching and research work, Liana is proud that she has served as the chief interpreter of the Mexican Chinese for the meetings between the leaders of China and Mexico. Liana often laments that it was Chinese changed her life, allowing her to apply what she has learned and make her own contribution to the exchanges between the two countries.
Not just translation, but interpretation
In addition to teaching, Liana's energy is mainly used to translate contemporary Chinese literature.
In 2012, after the news of Mo Yan's winning the Nobel Prize in Literature reached Mexico, a well-known Mexican newspaper called liana to ask liana, who is Mo Yan? "At that time, I couldn't find Mo Yan's books in bookstores all over Latin America." Leanna said. Compared to Márquez's popularity in China, she deeply feels that Mexico is unfamiliar with contemporary Chinese literature.
To this end, Liana is committed to the development of translator talents, offering Chinese translation courses at the Mexican Academy. In the past five years, Liana has set up a Chinese literature translation team with her Chinese translation graduate students, and has successively translated the works of contemporary Chinese writers such as Liu Zhenyun, Xu Zechen, Jia Pingwa, Ah Lai, and Chen Yan, which have been published and distributed in Mexico.
"I love teaching and interpreting, but my favorite is translation," Liana says. In her view, translating Chinese literature into Spanish is not only a translation, but also an interpretation, with the aim of letting Latin American readers understand China and understand the reasons behind China's development through literary works. Therefore, many of the works translated by Liana are works with realistic themes. For example, her translation of Xu Zechen's "Running Through Zhongguancun" aims to restore the spirit of realism. "I don't think Xu is writing, he's painting." In her view, the living state and mental state of the small people who "drifted north" at the end of the last century described in the book are similar to those of young people who have just come to Mexico City to study and seek employment. Liana feels that although their lives are difficult, they are proactive and full of yearning for the future. Therefore, in her translations, she tries to fit the current situation in Latin America and guides readers to find themselves in them.
In the practice of Chinese literary translation, Liana deeply feels the cultural differences between China and India and China and Latin America. What she did was to restore the Chinese history and culture, traditional customs, and character allusions that Latin American readers did not know to the Western context, so that local readers could better approach China. When translating Liu Zhenyun's "I Am Not Pan Jinlian", she noticed that if Chinese titles such as "Lao Chen" were directly translated as "old Chen", foreign readers could not understand it, and even caused a joke that China classified 30-year-olds as old people. She therefore adopted the practice of transliteration or paraphrasing. For another example, for words such as "qipao" and "Zhongshan dress", she advocates that it is not appropriate to translate them into "Chinese skirts" and "Chinese men's suits", but from the perspective of Chinese and Western cultural differences, they are cleverly translated as "Chinese-style modern men's formal dresses" to cultivate the perception of Chinese culture in Spanish readers. For the translation of idioms, proverbs, and epilogues, Liana opposed simple annotations and tried her best to translate them in literary Spanish.
For her outstanding contributions to the promotion of Chinese culture and Chinese publications, Liana won the 8th "Chinese Book Special Contribution Award" in 2014. She said, "Doing the work you like and being recognized and encouraged by the outside world is a happy thing in life." "Today, Liana continues to translate and write, even scheduling her work schedule on the dissemination of contemporary Chinese literature until after retirement." My dream is to recreate the Tower of Babel in the form of literary translations and other means, so that Chinese culture can truly enter Mexico. Liana said.
(Author: Hu Yanchun, Associate Professor, Belt and Road Research Institute, Beijing Language and Culture University)
Source: People's Daily Overseas Edition