Wang Di Lu Dapeng
Recently, historian Professor Wang Di and young translator Lu Dapeng visited The Xunlu Library in Chengdu to share a wonderful conversation with guest host Zhao Qiong and readers on how historians write for the public from the perspective of public historiography and microhistory.
The following is a review of the contents.
"History" Five Emperors Benji: Regarding the Three Emperors and Five Emperors, there are various theories in the early years of the Western Han Dynasty. After Sima Qian's research, the five emperors were the Yellow Emperor, Emperor Huan, Emperor Zhao, Yao, and Shun. They are all the ancestors of the legendary Huaxia people.
About writing history for the people
Zhao Qiong: When I write history for the people, when I think about this theme, there are two points: First, what is the history of the people in addition to the princes and generals, and the "History" that we can immediately think of is the history of the emperors, but what about the general public? Second, out of the field of historical research, the history written for the general public to see, even with some deductive colors in it, of course, like "Those Things of the Ming Dynasty" is not history, but a historical story? How does Teacher Wang Di see "writing history for the people"?
Wang Di: Although China currently has the only uninterrupted historical record in the world from ancient times to the present, if we read these contents carefully, we will find that it is mainly centered on the emperors and generals, and it is difficult to find the people's position in historical writing, the people's thoughts and stories, and the sufferings and joys they have experienced. Sima Qian's "Records of History" at least wrote a biography of assassins related to the jianghu, but later many of the histories of the broken dynasty became more and more neglectful of the people.
Most of the historical research is actually rare to really pay attention to the people, we put the main energy on changing dynasties, put on the emperor or the elite of the world, the general public can not find their chapters in the history books, this is the starting point for me to write history for the people. I don't agree with this heroic view of history, and I think the people should also have their rightful place in history, and that's what I've been doing for the last thirty years.
Due to the long-term influence of heroic historical writing, readers actually need to have a transformation. Many people think that history is created by heroes, so we should write about heroes and get inspiration and inspiration from the deeds of heroes, but I think this is not enough, we are all making history every day. So, I think that's the point of writing history for the people — that our history should reflect history itself, not just focus on the heroes.
Non-fiction writing about history
Zhao Qiong: In recent years, there has been a relatively hot concept of "non-fiction writing", and we have also seen "non-fiction writing of history", and many people have questions, "Can history still be fictionalized"? Because what is fiction is not history, but historical stories.
Wang Di: The non-fiction in the concept of real history writing must have a factual basis. What we call non-fiction, that is to say, the historical content of the events, people, culture, and economy we talk about, must either be supported by historical materials, or have their own field investigations, or obtain evidence from the literature. The so-called non-fiction writing of history is actually a way to be closer to the public in terms of writing. Our general history writing, like my first book, "Out of the Closed World," was written for professionals, a tome of more than seven hundred pages, with more than three hundred statistical tables in between.
If we're going to do nonfiction writing about history, I think we have to take into account a few questions:
First, there must be a character shaping, and the shaping of this character must have a basis.
Second, there must be a story. Why was "Brother Robe" recognized by the literary community after its publication and won the Lüliang Literature Award? A big reason is that it depicts Lei Mingyuan as such a living robe brother. Without these characters and just talking about events, I don't think it can be called non-fiction.
Third, the language must be vivid. I am also writing papers on very serious historical research, which are mainly analyzed on the basis of historical data, and I will not consider whether the language is vivid or not. But like "The Tea Shop on The Corner," I deliberately wanted to make it a little literary, not as serious and emotionless as my historical essay. Although we, as historians, must not let our emotions sway our judgments, "The Tea Shop on the Corner of the Street" is related to my own childhood memories, my experiences in Chengdu, and the people I have come into contact with. This sense of substitution is needed as historical non-fiction.
Wang Di's new work "The Tea Shop on the Corner"
Finally, there's about the style of the book. In the writing of history, there is a great emphasis on the citation of materials, and the books I have written actually have more detailed annotations, but when I was writing "Street Culture", "Tea House" and "Brother Robe", I had consciously hoped that these academic studies could be oriented to the public, so that the general reader could ignore the notes when reading, and those who were interested in tracing the end could also find the sources of information he was interested in according to the later notes. Although "The Tea Shop on the Corner of the Street" has no annotations, I finally listed a long list of quotations, and I mentioned in the middle of the text where a certain piece of information came from, such as from the educator Shu Xincheng's "Shuyou Xinying" published in 1925, and he mentioned the tea guests in Chengdu in the middle of "Shuyou Xinying", and it would be easy to find this source. This is also a consideration of mine, and the way of writing can be accepted by the general public, not just professional researchers.
Lu Dapeng: When I first came to work at the publishing house, people didn't seem to talk much about the concepts of fiction and non-fiction, and the concepts often said in the industry were novels and non-fictions. Many of the history books we see now, for example, there is a book about Wang Mang called "Xiangrui", if it is in Europe and the United States, it is generally not said that this is a nonnfiction, because it is a popular history book. Like He Wei's "Jiangcheng", or like the kind of travel literature that Professor Luo Xin likes, and like the translation documentary series of the Shanghai Translation Publishing House, this kind of news documentary writing is called nonfiction in Europe and the United States. Europe and the United States generally do not call "Xiangrui" a history book for the public to read as nonnfiction. It seems easy for us to confuse these two concepts and call "Xiangrui" a non-fiction work, but non-fiction and popular history are very clearly divided in Europe and the United States.
However, non-fiction writing, or journalistic documentary writing, or documentary literature, is actually very closely related to history books. A good non-fiction writer can often cultivate himself into a good historical researcher and writer later, and there are many examples.
Zhao Qiong: You have translated so many works, including many excellent historical works, through the translator's perspective, how do you see that historians write history to the public?
Lu Dapeng: On the one hand, I am translating history books for the public, and on the other hand, I am also doing editing and introducing such history books. It is worth mentioning that the anglo-American historical circles I know are very, very different from those of France and Germany on the European continent.
Like Richard Evans, a very top British scholar, who studied Nazi Germany's "Third Reich Trilogy" was very popular in China, he wrote a large number of popular history books, and he also wrote a small book on the history of British historiography, called "The World's Islanders: British Historians and the Continent". Richard Evans believes that the british historical circles are very different from the European continent, the British are cosmopolitan islanders, since they are islanders, they may have a narrow vision, but the British are very cosmopolitan. Moreover, British history writing has a literary tradition, pays more attention to literary training, and emphasizes that history books must have some literary style and be accepted by everyone. At the same time, British historians are also very good at writing the history of other countries, for example, the British write the history of Germany very well, and the study of the Soviet Union is also very good. But conversely, German historians who study Britain and write British history are less acceptable in Britain and less likely to be translated into English. Of course, the United States and the United Kingdom are in the same vein, and they are also similar, and American authors are also very good at writing history books for the public.
I also interviewed David Abrafia of Cambridge University, who himself studied Mediterranean history. I asked him, why would a historian with a very high position in British historiography be willing to write a book for the masses? He believes that excellent scholars with professional training have the responsibility and obligation to write books for the public, because if they do not write, this position will be occupied by some people who are not high enough, which will mislead the public. Therefore, he believes that British historians should have an obligation to do some public service and write some more beautiful history books for everyone.
Wang Di: In the past two or three decades, the United States has used another word, which is public history, public historiography. Historians write history as a kind of academic research, mainly academic dialogue between historians' professions, and the discussion between views is to recognize history itself. But after the rise of public historiography, these historians realized that they had to let historical writing out of the ivory tower and lead to reading for the masses.
In the past, not only China, but also Western history, more and more like the study of social sciences, the most typical is my book "Out of the Closed World", using the concepts of statistics, sociology, and economics to study history. Over the years, my own history writing has actually become closer and closer to narrative, and I have considered the literary nature of historical writing more and more. Haydon White wrote Metahistory, and he found that no matter what kind of historical writing, there is a potential structure underneath the historical narrative, which is actually in line with the division of literature, including comedy, tragedy, satire, and so on. Moreover, our historical research will also use literary rhetorical techniques, whether it is metaphors, metaphors, metaphors, and so on. After the publication of Hayden White's book, it attracted widespread attention in the West and became increasingly influential in China.
In fact, China also has such a tradition, if we trace historical writing back to Sima Qian, his "History" is often chosen as a model of ancient literature for our middle schools and universities, in addition to being a history book, it is also a very good literary work. Later, the development of our historiography, especially the rise of new historiography in the 20th century, was influenced by the professional history writing of the West, that is, to find the real history, not to use emotion, and to make history more and more scientific. When I arrived in the United States in the early 1990s, I found that the books I read in graduate classes in the United States were very few so-called traditional social science studies and more historical research works with humanistic tendencies.
This kind of humanistic history that I came into contact with in Europe and the United States had a profound impact on me. When I was writing my doctoral dissertation, I was thinking about how to express the culture of Chengdu, from "Street Culture" to "Tea House" to "Brother Robe", and I thought that "The Tea Shop on That Street Corner" was getting closer and closer to the narrative of historical writing.
"Brother Robe"
If I end my thinking on this issue with a simple sentence, I think that the writing of history should be literary, and the writing of literature should have a sense of history, you should read Mo Yan's "Fatigue of Life and Death", Lu Yao's "Ordinary World", Yu Hua's "Alive"... How strong is the sense of history!
Why is everyone more and more like Li Jieren now? His sense of place is very strong, so when I wrote "The Tea House" and "The Tea Shop on the Corner", I quoted Li Jieren's description, because the name of the tea house and the name of the street he described were completely real. Of course, after 1949, Li Jieren was also under pressure from literary criticism, saying that you have no revolutionary romanticism at all, like the end of the historical chronicle, but as a historical researcher, I think this is too good, because we rarely remember this kind of daily life. In particular, he wrote about the urban changes in Chengdu at such a great turning point in the late 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, there is no historical data, where to find it? Fortunately, there was a Li Jieren, and what Li Jieren recorded was actually what his eyes saw, what he experienced. Literature must have a sense of history, and history must have a literary nature, and this is one of my concepts, and I also adhere to this concept.
Translations of historical works
Zhao Qiong: How does Dapeng define good translations? In your translation process, how do you translate a work to be both accurate and interesting?
Lu Dapeng: Because the books I translate are basically popular history, they will emphasize literature. For example, in a war, a very academic historian might use a lot of numbers, archives, etc., to compare the economic situation, taxes, or how this kind of finance supported the military. Another way to write is to use non-linear narratives and multi-perspective literary techniques to write about war in a gripping way. Most of the books I translate are like this. But I also like academic history books, like Wang Di's "Stepping Out of the Closed World", although there is a lot of mathematics in it that I, a liberal arts student, can't control, but the harvest is still very large.
The last seven or eight years in China have been a very prosperous period for the translation of historical works. A very prominent British publisher told me that in the past, Germany was the world's largest translation country, and at the beginning of the 21st century, China has surpassed Germany to become the first translation power. There are now new history books, non-fiction writing, and high-end academic research abroad, and there will soon be Chinese editions, which is difficult to imagine in other countries. So even though the publishing industry is facing difficulties of one kind or another, we are still able to do a lot of things now, which I think is very rare. Some of the book brands that everyone is very familiar with, such as The Republic, Houlang, CITIC, and our social science literature Oracle, have done a lot. Although those of us who are editors and translators who do the translation of history books are not rich enough to be able to bring a lot to readers, we can introduce our favorite books to China, and we have some help for readers who need them, and I think we are still very lucky and happy.
Wang Di: As Teacher Dapeng said just now, I would like to add that in fact, a large number of translations, including those books of oracle bones, are also very helpful for our academic research. Especially in the past, I was in the United States, mainly in dialogue with Western scholars, and when I came to the University of Macau after 2015, I felt that writing English works was too time and energy for me, after all, I was not a native language, like the second part of "The Tea House" was written for twelve years. When I returned to China, I began to write directly in Chinese, and since 2015 I have been working on the relationship between the United States and China after the Xinhai Revolution until the 1920s, especially the reaction to the New Culture Movement of the May Fourth Movement. In the past, when I wrote in English, I mainly read the original English books. But now that I'm writing in Chinese, I'm making extensive references to works that have been translated about my research topics, such as Adam Tuz's The Terrible Flood. It would be very time-consuming to read such a thick English work from beginning to end, but if it were Chinese, I could see ten lines at a glance, very quickly. For example, Barbara Tuchman's "Stilwell and the American Experience in China (1911-1945)", such a thick work, if it is read in English, it is relatively slow, but these books are translated and introduced one after another, which is very convenient to read.
In fact, my interest in reading has far outweighed my own writing needs, and as long as I see the introduction book well written, and if there is Chinese choice, I choose to read it first Chinese. Sometimes I really can't find Chinese version, I also read the original English, such as Know My Name ("Know My Name"), What Remains ("Restless Ghost"), etc., can not find the Chinese version I read the English original, if you can find the first choice or Chinese. Recently, I also read Cornelius Ryan's "The Longest Day" about the Normandy landings, and also read Scott Anderson's "Lawrence of Arabia" translated by Roc, as well as Roger Crowley's Mediterranean trilogy, Paul French's "Midnight Peking" and so on, which are very beautiful. Although I don't study these questions, I expand the scope of my reading. I don't know that China has now become the first translation country, but it also shows the rise of our reading community, especially the younger generation.
Lu Dapeng's translation of Lawrence of Arabia: War, Lies, Imperial Folly, and the Formation of the Modern Middle East
Zhao Qiong: Speaking of translation, like "Brother Robe", Teacher Wang Di also wrote in English at the beginning, so there will be a lot of unconventional historical materials used, such as brother Robe's code incision, and bamboo branch words, translated from Chinese into English, is there a ready-made translation? When these books are translated from English back to Chinese you are also doing it yourself, do you translate them back, or do you just rewrite them with Chinese?
Wang Di: I do some stupid kung fu. The original four books were written in English first, and the disadvantage is that almost 90% of the cited materials are Chinese, but in the end the English version was published, and I wanted to publish Chinese copies, and I had to translate the English into Chinese. Now when I write about the United States and China during the May Fourth Movement and the New Culture Period, almost all of the materials I cite are in English, because many of the materials quoted come from the New York Times, the Christian Monitor, and so on, and I am now writing in Chinese, and I have to translate them all into Chinese.
The first paper I wrote about bamboo branches was probably published in LATE IMPERIAL CHINA in 2003. When I write, in fact, I still work hard, because the bamboo branch word is a form of poetic expression, to translate it into English, so that English readers can also read it, then English also needs to have rhyme, I have to consider what words to use when translating into English, try to make it read rhythmically.
As for the incision, it is more difficult, because it is a hidden language, which is originally a relatively obscure word, and it must be understood from between the lines, so how to translate? Some need to be annotated, some need to be introduced in the background, which involves another English paper of mine, titled "Mysterious Communication," published in the journal Late Imperial China in 2008. This article studied the secret language of the brothers, such as "tea bowl array", where members of the brothers who did not know each other contacted each other in the tea house, and everyone did not speak, just moved the tea bowl and teapot, they could communicate, and outsiders did not know what they were doing. How to understand their secret language is the problem that this paper is trying to solve. But translating these hidden words into English is indeed quite difficult, and I tried to do it more authentically, even considering the problem of rhyming. The paper is also translated Chinese and included in my book From Measurement, Narrative to Textual Interpretation. This English paper is easy to find in databases of various foreign language papers, and the English edition of Brother Robe (Stanford University Press, 2018) includes this part, so you can look for a cross-reading to see how the poems and incisions were translated.
Zhao Qiong: Dapeng took translation as a profession, how did he carry out this work?
Lu Dapeng: First of all, the original book must be a good book. If the original book is not very good, then no matter how much work the translator does, no matter how good the translation level is, it is powerless to return to heaven.
In translation, I think it can be said in two parts, one is social science books, including history books, and the other is literary books. When translating history books, I think it is much easier than literary translation. The text of history books generally does not need to be so painstakingly deliberated, worked hard, and pondered, but there are also difficulties, just like a book I recently translated, "The Boundless Sea", which talks about the history of transportation in the world's oceans, for example, when talking about the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean, the author in the book quotes a lot of ancient Chinese books, and I want to reduce it to the ancient text of the Chinese. Because I myself came from a study of English and American literature, I did not have any foundation in Chinese philology, nor did I have that kind of training, which was a very headache for me, and it took a lot of effort, but fortunately I got the guidance and help of professionals. To translate a literary book, you need to examine the text and match the sound of the original book. If the original book is a more sloppy voice, you can't translate it into crepe; if the original book is a solemn voice, you can't translate it as "grounded".
I've developed the habit of translating for about 50 minutes in one breath, maybe translating more than 1,000 words, and then taking a break for ten minutes. Translating this job is a bit like an athlete, you have to train every day, you have to insist on exercise, you can't fish for three days and dry the net for two days, you have to do at least a little every day. If it breaks for half a month at once, it will be very difficult to pick it up again.
Translation is a craft.
Lu Dapeng translated a trilogy of Mediterranean epics
Hobbies outside of the profession
Zhao Qiong: I was very surprised by Wang Di's new work "The Tea Shop on the Corner", which has a lot of illustrations, and Wang Di wrote in the afterword that these illustrations were all drawn by himself. What kind of hobbies does Teacher Wang Di have besides historical research?
Wang Di: Actually, I usually paint very little, I used to like to paint, and I hope to become an artist since I was a child. Unfortunately, at that time, I felt that the confidence in the Academy of Fine Arts was insufficient, and the history test of the 1978 college entrance examination was the best, and I thought it would be safer to simply apply for the history department, and then there would be no time to consider art painting. In 2006, I was a resident researcher at the National Humanity Center in North Carolina, WHERE I was a resident researcher for a year, and by chance, the resident researcher of the center that year had an old American woman, who was a professor at the University of California and had been studying Chinese painting. As we talked, we talked about my experiences as a child. She offered us to paint together once a week. I was in that place, and I had this opportunity to evoke this imagination of art again. I painted there for a year, and I picked up this hobby for the first time since I was in college.
Now it is easier to draw with a tablet, and you don't need to prepare paper, pen and ink, you can operate on the computer. Sometimes I draw when I'm on a plane and use a painting app. Because I collected a lot of old photos, the pictures had to be processed accordingly, so I connected painting and writing. If you want to use this app, you must be familiar with these things, and I will simply show some photos in painting according to my own artistic understanding.
When I came out of "The Tea Shop on the Corner of the Street", I thought that if I used pictures again and repeated the previous books, then I tried it, plus I thought more about the literary color of the book, if I added some artistic forms, it might be richer, and finally I painted nineteen paintings. I also mentioned in the epilogue of this book that this is also a fulfillment of my artistic dream as a teenager, and it is a new attempt.
Zhao Qiong: What hobbies does Dapeng have besides translating books?
Lu Dapeng: Experience a variety of cuisines. There are many very authentic foreign restaurants in Beijing, and there are also in Shanghai. I remember many years ago, when traveling abroad or traveling on business, some friends may also have to bring their own Chinese rice, rice cookers... I think it's a pity that people still have to be brave enough to challenge something they haven't tasted. The last time I was in the UK, a friend took me to eat the most exotic restaurant was Eritrean cuisine, which was really interesting.
In addition to good food, I like to play computer games. I've been playing games since elementary school, and I'm interested in history, so I'm generally playing history games, such as the Age of Discovery, the Age of Empires, and so on. I don't chase new games anymore, I still play the old games I played when I was in middle school.
Wang Di: Actually, I still like to grow vegetables. In Macau, there is no land, I use plastic foam boxes on the balcony to grow vegetables, degrade the kitchen waste into fertilizer and apply it directly, and invent my own equipment for degrading and collecting kitchen waste, basically there will not be a bag of garbage a week, for which I am very proud and have a sense of accomplishment.
Zhao Qiong: The epidemic has lasted for two years, and everyone is a little tired and hopes that the epidemic will end as soon as possible. In the new year, the two teachers cheered on the readers and friends!
Lu Dapeng: I suggest that if you have any hobbies, such as reading, fishing, or cooking by yourself, you must enjoy these hobbies. Personal interests are very important and can help you through some tough times. Don't throw away these things you like.
Wang Di: From a historical point of view, whether writing the history of the world or writing the history of China, it will definitely be a very important event, which can be said to have a far-reaching impact, because the whole world is closed.
For each of us, I think we should think, first, how do we get along with the world, how do we live with nature, how can we avoid causing damage to nature? The second point, I think, is how to live in harmony with each other, how to live in harmony with each other? I recently wrote a foreword to a book, A History of Human Evolution, which was just published, and this book has a very important point of view, that human development to this day is actually mainly due to human cooperation rather than competition play a major role. Therefore, today we must think more about how to cooperate between people, between countries and countries, and between nations.
Q&A
Q: In historical research, how to deal with insufficient historical materials or too much information?
Wang Di: There is too little information, and for students pursuing degrees, my advice is not to choose this kind of topic, because time is limited, unlike when I write "Tea House" for twelve years. There is very little information about "Brother Robe", but I wrote that through more than 20,000 words of information to write a book, to explain the matter of this brother in robe clearly, to add a lot of other research. Including the place of "Wangzhen", we must first examine where the "Wangzhen" is? "Brother Robe" was released in 2018, and no one has said that he wants to discuss this matter with me, because I am 100% sure.
If there is a lot of information, my suggestion is to be sure to narrow down the topic relatively. Once the topic is narrowed, you exclude a lot of material that is of little relevance. The topic must not be too big, otherwise it will end up lacking depth because there are too many issues involved. If the data allows, the title is as small as possible, and it would be even more wonderful if it could be written as a micro history. However, even if you write a small topic, you must have a big problem in your mind, that is, what problem you want to explain when you study this topic.
Q: How do you see the translator's subjective play when translating articles?
Lu Dapeng: Non-fiction works or historical works, I am very much against the translators playing too much. I think that for non-fiction or history books, the text of the Chinese translation is relatively smooth, has a certain literary accomplishment, and has a certain aesthetic, which is very good. There is no need to play yourself in other people's books and engage in any kind of showmanship. I am very much opposed to the use of dialects in translation, very much against the use of dialects, unless there is a specific issue of dialects, such as Sichuan dialects or Northeast Dialects. I am also very opposed to using online language, and try not to use internet slang.
The choice of language is one aspect, and the other is the problem of annotations. My principle is that as a translator, I am for the reader, and since I am serving you, I will do this service at home, so that you can understand the beauty of the original book as easily and easily as possible. So when I translate it myself, I make more comments. Many of the original foreign books in some word games, puns, or some more subtle metaphors, etc., I think it is necessary to add a note to explain, otherwise it is a pity for the reader to miss these.
Wang Di: I worked with a friend in the 1980s to translate Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man, which I did to annotate the whole book. In fact, the process of making annotations also helps us to have a more accurate grasp of the content when translating.
Editor-in-Charge: Gu Ming