On February 21, Mr. Fan Dacan, an expert and translator of German literature, died in Beijing at the age of 88. Just a day later, on February 22, Mr. Luo Xinzhang, a French literary translator and expert on Fu Lei's research, also died in Beijing at the age of 86. It is worth mentioning that the two translators entered the Spanish Department of Peking University at the same time, and they have the same friendship.
Fan Dacan
Fan Dacan was born in 1934 in Qi County, Shanxi. In 1953, he was admitted to the Spanish Department of Peking University, and was one of the first batch of German majors after the adjustment of Peking University's department, under the tutelage of Feng Zhi. He studied at the University of Leipzig in the GDR, where he continued to teach until his retirement. In 1979, he began to publish works, including the monographs "On Several Problems in Lukács's Literary and Artistic Thought", "Goethe's Exploration of the Road to Realizing the Humanistic Ideal", translated "Goethe's Thesis on Art", "Aesthetic Education Book" (co-translated with Feng Zhi), etc., edited the "History of German Literature" (five volumes), and wrote the second volume of this book.
Written for nearly a decade, the History of German Literature is considered to be the most comprehensive, detailed and academic history of German literature in China so far, and is a must-read in this field. Some commentators believe that the "History of German Literature" has the obvious characteristics of "combining history and theory", "putting forward breakthrough new insights on some major issues in the history of German literature, and filling in many blank spots in German studies." (Jiang Chengyong)
Luo Xinzhang
Luo Xinzhang, who was admitted to the Spanish Department of Peking University in the same year as Fan Dacan, was two years younger than the former. Since 1963, he has worked in the Chinese Literature Magazine Of the Bureau of Foreign Languages and the Institute of Foreign Literature of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He is the author of the papers "The Theory of Translation in the Mainland's Self-Contained System", "The "Likeness" and "Etc." of Chinese and Foreign Translation Views", edited the "Collection of Translation Theories", and translated "The Story of Lena Fox", "Trisdown and Iser", "Red and Black", etc. Luo's translation of "The Red and the Black" has a deep personal style, has been republished many times, and has reached more than 40 editions so far, which is a classic translation in mainland translation literature, so that "there is Luo Xinzhang's translation first", Liu Mingjiu and Luo Guolin no longer translate the story of "The Red and the Black".
In addition to his achievements in translation practice, Luo Xinzhang is also quite accomplished in translation theory. He was familiar with Fu Lei's translation, and had copied Fu Lei's translation of more than two million words, and in 1979 he wrote the earliest commentary on Fu Lei's translation in China, "Reading Fu Lei's Translation with Feeling", which was also praised by the translation community as "Fu Lei's successor".
In the 1980s, he completed the article "The Mainland's Self-contained Translation Theory", which, together with a series of subsequent translation research papers, formed his own translation theory. In the eyes of the translation community, Luo Xinzhang has a solid foundation in Western learning, the traditional culture is equally profound, his writing is elegant and intellectual, and his words are profound.
Fan Dacan and Luo Xinzhang are outstanding translators trained in New China, who have made contributions to the translation of contemporary foreign literature and the construction and academic development of translation theory. The two read in the same window, and then went away together in one day, which was lamentable.