Text/Yangcheng Evening News all-media reporter Wen Yi Sun Lei
"With the beautiful translation pen, it opened the second stage of Polish literature in the new China translation, and opened a rare window for domestic readers to understand the magnificent and strange Polish literature with a long charm after the reform and opening up."
The editor-in-chief of World Literature is pleased to use this passage to evaluate Yi Lijun's life.
On February 7, 2022, the famous Polish literary translator Yi Lijun died of illness in Beijing at the age of 87.
The translator, who has been working in the polish literary translation industry for many years, has only entered the public eye in the past two years. In 2019, Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk won the Nobel Prize in Literature, giving Yi Lijun more visibility as a translator. Many years ago, Yi Lijun and her husband Yuan Hanrong translated Olga Tokarczuk's "Taikoo and Other Times" and "House by Day, House at Night", and discovered the literary value of the Nobel Prize writer in China in advance without much reader attention.
At the same time, Yi Lijun also translated dozens of Polish literary works such as Adam Mickiewicz's poem "Ancestor Sacrifice", the epic poem "Mr. Tadusch" (co-translation), "Fire and Sword" (co-translation), "Crusader Knight" (upper and lower volumes, co-translation), Vigombrovic's "Ferdi Dukai" (co-translation) and so on.
In addition, she has been teaching Polish language for many years, training young translators and researchers of Polish literature, and has been awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Gdansk, Poland, the Order of the President of Poland, and the Lifetime Achievement Award for Translation Culture. Her influence on the study of Polish language and literature in the Lingnan region deepened with her closed disciple Mao Yinhui coming to teach at the Guangdong University of Foreign Studies.
Pioneering "first translator"
In the late 1990s, with olga Tokarczuk still not paying attention to it, Yi Lijun and Yuan Hanrong took the lead in translating Tokarczuk's work Taikoo and Other Times, which was published by Taiwan's Chunk culture in 2003, and her subsequent translation of "House by Day, House at Night" was also published in Taiwan in 2007 (the Taiwan edition of the book is titled Scrapbook for Collecting Dreams).
I am pleased to think that in the translation world, retranslation and first translation are two completely different concepts. To some extent, the retranslation is that others have laid the foundation and are on the shoulders of the predecessors to translate, while the first translation is from scratch, and the difficulties encountered by the first translator are often unimaginable to the retranslator. What Yi Lijun and Yuan Hanrong did was pioneering first translation work.
"Olga Tokarczuk's work touches on many fields, such as psychology, medicine, music, biology, and so on. Moreover, her writing style is still integrated, which may be a mixture of romanticism, existentialism, naturalism and other styles, and the influence of various writers on her is also obvious. "I am glad to believe that translating Olga Tokarczuk's works requires translators to have high artistic attainment and deep language skills, which requires the translator to match the comprehensive quality of the author.
On the night of the announcement of Olga Tokarczuk's award, the phone calls from Mr. Yi's house were all broken. She was particularly excited that the books she had translated had caused a major response and won Nobel Prize recognition, which was the best way to affirm her self-worth. "I am glad to say that the average reader only sees Chinese expressions, and in fact, the accurate understanding of the original text of a translated work is the most important." Teacher Yi's translations are trustworthy, high-quality and balanced, and it can be said that she restored Tokarchuk to Chinese readers. I am glad to comment on Yi Lijun's translation.
Wander outside of your translation comfort zone
"Still Life Painting with Horse Chew" is another Polish literary masterpiece translated by Yi Lijun, which was included in the "Blue Eastern Europe" translation series project of Guangdong Huacheng Publishing House.
"The essay "Still Life with a Horse's Chew" by the Polish writer Zbignev Herbert is particularly difficult in the 'Blue Eastern Europe' series. The book is too difficult, it deals with the history of European art, mainly about Dutch painting. Happy, who is also the editor-in-chief of Blue Eastern Europe, believes that Zbignev Herbert's poetry is not the same as the prose essay style, its poetry narrative is stronger, as long as the tone is grasped, the translation work is relatively easy to carry out, while the prose essay is different.
"Zbignev Herbert is a learned man who likes to 'drop the bag' in prose writing, and this type of work may be more difficult to understand than an academic paper. Therefore, it is not only necessary to understand Polish to translate his prose, but also to have a deep Polish culture, historical accumulation, and excellent language skills. He was pleased to say that when he got the title of Hebett's "Still Life Painting with Horse Chew", it was a difficult problem to find a translator who could match it, "The required language ability refers to being able to grasp and understand the spirit in Polish, and then convey it to the Chinese language, to achieve a delicate balance to reflect the charm of the original work." ”
Yi Lijun graduated from the Department of Chinese of Wuhan University with a bachelor's degree, and was sent to study at the University of Warsaw in Poland, and she loved literature all her life. In the eyes of Joy, Yi Lijun is the best person to translate Herbert's prose. "Teacher Yi was old at that time, and we didn't dare to disturb her easily, but in the end we proposed it to her." Teacher Yi said that she has been translating Herbert's poetry since the 1990s, and she knows the weight of this writer, and now that she wants to translate prose, she said that she is willing to try it no matter how difficult it is. Happy to say that through this incident, what yi Lijun saw was a spirit of constantly challenging herself and escaping the "comfort zone" of translation.
Spread the seeds of Polish literature to Lingnan
In addition to translating literary works, Yi Lijun also undertook the teaching and literary research of the Department of Eastern European Languages at the University of foreign Chinese beijing (now the European Institute of Languages and Cultures), and began recruiting doctoral students in 2000 when she was about to retire. Yi Lijun is the first Polish doctoral supervisor in China.
She has trained a total of three Polish doctoral students, and Professor Mao Yinhui, currently the deputy dean of the School of Western Languages and Cultures of Guangdong University of Foreign Studies and the head of the Department of Polish Language, is a closed disciple of Yi Lijun.
"She teaches undergraduates, paying special attention to their oral expression skills, and when she is a freshman, she talks to us directly in Polish as soon as she takes class. In the face of her style, we have a certain pressure and need to do a lot of pre-class preparation to deal with it calmly. Mao Yinhui recalls that Yi Lijun's maverick teaching style has left a deep impression on her and laid a good foundation for the Polish language. Mao Yinhui, who is interested in literature, successfully entered Yi Lijun's door after graduating with a master's degree and continued to pursue doctoral studies.
With the continuous advancement of China's "Belt and Road" initiative, non-lingua franca languages of countries along the Silk Road such as Polish have been developed in a spurt. In 2013, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies opened the Department of Polish Language, and Mao Yinhui came here through the talent introduction program.
"Professor Yi Lijun has always cared for the Polish language department of Guangwai and once jokingly called the Polish language major in Guangwai the inheritance of his mantle in Lingnan." Mao Yinhui introduced that in November 2016, Yi Lijun, who was over eighty years old, was gladly invited to Guangwai to give a keynote lecture for Polish language students: "At that time, her thinking was very clear, unlike the elderly in her 80s, who basically spoke out of the manuscript, and concentrated the history of Polish literature in an hour and a half. ”
In recent years, the Polish Department of Guangdong University of Foreign Studies has continued to grow in size, and a group of students have begun to embark on this not easy road of literary translation. Mao Yinhui believes that this is also a kind of inheritance of the mentor spirit in Lingnan.
The spiritual mentor of generations of students
And her last video was Chinese New Year's Eve afternoon, the day she had been discharged from the hospital and returned home, looking pretty good in spirits. She didn't video me directly on New Year's Day, and the babysitter said she was a little tired. On the afternoon of February 7, Yi Lijun died in Beijing. Mao Yinhui said sadly that in the past two years, she has not been able to return to Beijing to meet with her mentor due to the epidemic, which has left her irreparable regrets.
Yi Lijun is gone, but her spirit has influenced generations of Polish literary translators. The short story collection "Elephant" by Słovamir Mrogek, translated by Mao Yinhui and his mentor, is Professor Yi Lijun's last translated work. This cooperation made Mao Yinhui once again see the tutor's dedication and enthusiasm for literary translation.
"The return on literary translation is very low, not proportional to the income of doing a business or diplomatic interpreter, and it requires a lot of effort to be repeatedly deliberated, and the recognition obtained is not necessarily matched." Therefore, you must be able to sit on the cold bench to really do literary translation. In Mao Yinhui's heart, the tutor is not only a guide to her studies, but also a beacon in her spirit, "If there is no her existence, we may not have such a firm pursuit in professionalism, and it is difficult to have the strength to always move upwards in our careers." ”
"After the teacher left, all the students went to her funeral, which was a scene of hundreds of people. She has the strength to unite all her disciples, and every student loves her. Mao Yinhui said.
Compared with Yi Lijun's career, the current literary translation is much more convenient in terms of technical conditions. "Now some of the knowledge points encountered in translation can be solved in a few minutes on the Internet, and previously you could only find information with your bare hands." I also had to write by hand, translating word by word. "I am happy to believe that although technology has made translation work more convenient, the spirit left by the predecessors should be inherited," the real first-class translator must be like Yi Lijun teacher, always adhere to their love, obey the inner call, and even constantly challenge themselves." ”
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Yi Lijun, female, born on December 4, 1934, from Huanggang, Hubei Province. Professor and doctoral supervisor of Beijing University of Foreign Chinese, translator and researcher of Polish literature.
For her outstanding work in talent training and academic research, Yi Lijun was awarded the Polish Cultural Merit Medal twice in 1984 and 1997; the "Knight's Cross" and the "Officer's Cross" issued by the President of the Republic of Poland in 2000 and 2011, and nominated by the Speaker of the Polish Republic of Poland in 2008 and the title of "Polish Language and Culture Ambassador".
In 2018, Yi Lijun won the Translation Culture Lifetime Achievement Award, the highest award in the translation industry issued by the China Translators Association.