Literary Translation: Between Sense of Language and Beauty

Author: Lin Shaohua

Lin Shaohua translated the cover of "Drums in the Distance". Profile picture

In the autumn of October last year, the osmanthus flowers were fragrant, and the academic seminar of "Murakami Haruki Literature Multidimensional Interpretation" was held in Hangzhou, where the bridge was painted, and the historic Hangzhou Normal University was held.

In the late 1980s, I, who was teaching at Jinan University— also happened to be the age of "thirty-seven years old" mentioned in the first sentence of "Norwegian Forest"—translated "Norwegian Forest". The stars shift, the moon sets and the sun rises, and erlai has two years in thirty years. At the beginning of the translation, "thirty-seven-year-old me" still had some residual warmth of youth on me, generally full of red light, black hair, and full of pride, and now, I am over sixty-nine years old, remnants of the yang ancient road, thin horse west wind, "I don't know where to get autumn frost in the mirror." Allow me to quote again from The Norwegian Woods: "I am reminded of many things that I have lost in my past journey of life—the years of the past, the regrets of those who have died or left, the unrecoverable remorse." "Yes, unrecoverable remorse, unrepentant remorse. In the middle of the night, the cold rain knocked on the window, and although the old tears did not run rampant, they did bite the horns more than once or twice and issued a long sigh, and every time they were "sad and unable to help themselves." Yes, it's the words of "Norwegian Woods" again.

However, there is at least one thing that is gratifying, and that is my translator - people may not know that I am a professor at Jinan University and then a professor at Ocean University of China, but they basically know that I am a translator. So far, thick and thin, large and small, I have translated at least a hundred books. The translators include Natsume Soseki, Ryunosuke Wasagawa, Junichiro Tanizaki, Takuki Kobayashi, Osamu Dazai, Yasunari Kawabata, Yasushi Inoue, Junichi Watanabe, and Kyoichi Katayama. In terms of works, "I Am a Cat", "Rashomon", "Kinkaku-ji Temple", "Snow Country" and "Call for Love in the Center of the World" have been recognized and praised. Of course, the most influential is the Murakami series, including "Norwegian Forest", "Kafka by the Sea", "Strange Bird Journey" and "Assassination of the Knight Commander", which I independently translated forty-three copies and two co-translated with others. As of the end of December 2020, the total circulation of these 40 Shanghainese murakami books exceeded 13.7 million copies, and the number of readers was much larger than that. In other words, the translation i scribbled with my fountain pen has shaken the heartstrings of tens of millions of readers. In the words of one reader, like the pure moonlight of a quiet night soothing his lonely soul, like the delicate tentacles of a small river shrimp piercing his tear glands, like a distant cooking smoke-filled log cabin leading himself out of the wilderness of youth, or like a hillside full of clovers allowing himself to hold a cub and play on it all day...

When Jin Yong died more than three years ago, some people said that where there were Chinese, there was Jin Yong. As for Haruki Murakami, it may be said that where there are young people, there is Murakami. Why is Murakami so hot? According to Murakami's own summary, one is because the story is interesting, and the other is because the style has "universal penetration". Stylistic style, here mainly refers to the tone of the pen, the brushstroke, that is, the overall language style of the article; the universal penetration, in the words of Murakami on another occasion, is about the power of language to "reach the human heart". From the perspective of translation, the story is not much different from anyone who translates it. Much worse is stylistic, language. I remember Mu Xin said: "To write a good vernacular language, you must be proficient in the language." Looking at foreign translations, you have to pick a translator, but the translation is not good, and there is no energy. "Nothing! That is to say, the translation can not only make the original work Gu Pan shine brightly, but also may overshadow his gray face. As far as Murakami's works are concerned, even if their style has "universal penetration", if the translation is not in place, it is difficult to penetrate into the bottom of people's hearts, and even if it becomes a water slick oil, it is not known. Seriously, a translator can either complete an original or destroy an original.

The Hangzhou meeting mentioned at the beginning is also because there are many young people in the participants, so I rely on the old and sell the old, and in the final speech, I avoid the foolproof routine clichés, and speak bluntly about literary translation. I say that I have paid more or less attention to the translations of young translators, including young teachers, and there are very few translations that make me happy. Gein does not go from semantics and context to translation, but from semantics, grammar to translation, that is, from dictionary to translation. For example, people in the basement of the village hold their breath and grope, drumming and tinkering, but you translate the dictionary to check "Baidu" in the brightly lit standard room on the second floor, naturally do not understand the "universal penetration", do not understand the mystery of the church, and do not understand the mystery of the church, literature and literary translation can not be talked about. In other words, the translation of pure literary works is not the literal meaning of the translation, but the information behind the translated words, and the penetration of the translation style is enough to penetrate the information on the back of the paper - that is, the unique aesthetic pleasure and beauty of literature!

So where does the beauty come from? From the sense of language. The sense of language comes from a lot of reading of the original text. The vocabulary and sentence patterns learned from a large number of readings should be said to be alienated from the standard definition of the dictionary's dryness at the beginning, and with the vivid perceptual factors given by various contexts, such as temperature, smell, and atmosphere, such as rhythm, rhythm, and breathing. Appropriating wooden hearts is like putting a fish in water instead of on a table to observe. It is also like water weeds, which Mu Xin uses as a metaphor for the poem in "Dream of the Red Chamber"—"taking out water is not good." Put in water, look good". If "placed in water" is placed in the context, you will unexpectedly feel the various extensions, extended references, and subtle meanings of the vocabulary, and the original composition or the overall language style will also be understood. In this way, the translation saves a lot of time for rational analysis of the painstaking struggle, "suddenly looking back, the man is in the middle of the light." In general, Murakami values style more than stories. He said that "style is everything" and that stories would "come uninvited." So for the translator, it may be said that the sense of language is everything. Only with a sense of language can we translate the sense of beauty and the aesthetic feeling in the style.

Let me give you an example. In 2017, I translated Murakami's novel The Assassination of the Knight Commander. You may know, you may not know, this novel was bought by the Shanghai Translation Publishing House for a sky-high royalty, which is more than "a thousand dollars". If you just buy an interesting story, it's certainly not worth it. There are more people in China who can tell stories, and Mo Yan's ability to tell stories is not under the village. If you buy a unique language style, a style with "universal penetration", then it will bring a heterogeneous aesthetic experience to Chinese readers, thereby expanding the potential and boundaries of Chinese literary language expression, and at the same time bringing new possibilities to the literary and artistic aesthetic exchanges between China and Japan. If this is the case, then the royalties have their value in both sky-high and land prices. The embodiment of this value fundamentally depends on translation: general translation paraphrases content or story, non-general translation reconstructs the beauty of language and style. This is also the purpose, fun and fun of literary translation.

Lin Shaohua, born in 1952, is a professor at the School of Foreign Chinese of Ocean University of China, vice president of the Chinese Society for the Study of Japanese Literature, vice chairman of the Qingdao Writers Association, and has taught at Jinan University and Nagasaki Prefectural University in Japan. His major works include "The Beauty of Falling Flowers", "For the Freedom of the Soul", "Nostalgia and Conscience", "Rainy Night Lantern", etc., translated works by Haruki Murakami such as "Norwegian Forest", "Kafka by the Sea", "Assassination of the Knight Leader", and more than 100 works by Famous Japanese artists such as "I Am a Cat", "Rashomon", "Snow Country" and so on.

People's Daily ( 2022-02-17 17th edition)

Source: People's Daily - People's Daily