The thing asked | Ge ShuXisi: Why did the translation of "Dream of the Red Chamber" in Dutch take 13 years?

Goshu Xisi: Why did the translation of "Dream of the Red Chamber" in Dutch take 13 years?

China News Service Leiden, The Netherlands, March 27 Title: Why did the translation of "Dream of the Red Chamber" in Dutch take 13 years?

——Interview with dutch translator Goshu Xisi

China News Service reporter De Yongjian

In November 2021, the dutch translation (120 times) "Dream of the Red Chamber" was officially published. This great work of Chinese literature finally has a Dutch translation that matches its status.

Three Dutch translators, Anne Sytske· Keijser), Silvia M. Marijnissen), Mark Leenhouts translated for 13 years, and the final translation that met the reader was bound in four volumes and was 2160 pages long.

After the translation came out, it attracted the attention of Dutch academic circles and the media, and many Dutch media published reports or wrote book reviews. Recently, Geshu Xisi was interviewed by China News Agency "East and West Question" at Leiden University in the Netherlands, where he taught, telling the 13 years of translation process and even the importance of the Dutch translation of "Dream of the Red Chamber" to the Dutch public, especially young people.

Cover of 4 volumes of the Dutch translation of Dream of the Red Chamber. China News Service sent a picture of Ge Shuxisi

The interview transcript is summarized below:

China News Service: The outside world may be curious, why did it take 13 years to complete the translation? What's the hardest part of translating? What's the most interesting place?

Goshu Xisi: In fact, we have not been engaged in the translation of "Dream of the Red Chamber" for 13 years, we all have our own jobs, I am a teacher at Leiden University in the Netherlands, Ma Sophie and Lin Ke have not only translated "Dream of the Red Chamber" over the years, but also translated many other works.

The translation took so long, because first we had to find a way to translate the tone of Dream of the Red Chamber into the appropriate Dutch. The dialogue of "Dream of the Red Chamber" is very much, and it is very interesting and attractive, and there are very fine things in it, from which you can feel the character of the character. Therefore, sometimes the meaning may have been turned out, but it always feels like the shortcomings are what it is, not vivid enough, not enough to live, and feel that the tone is not appropriate.

Take the word "you". There is also "you" in Dutch, but it only means "respect", not "distance" between people and people. In "Dream of the Red Chamber", the tone of "you" changes a lot, it is reasonable to say that the attacker is Jia Baoyu's handmaiden, and should use "you" to call Jia Baoyu, but with her intimate relationship with Jia Baoyu, she will never use "you" to call Jia Baoyu, but she will definitely use "you" to call Wang Xifeng, which requires us to carefully distinguish the relationship between the characters and translate the different tones well.

Translating "Dream of the Red Chamber" also requires understanding a lot of cultural background, which allows us to contact all aspects of traditional Chinese culture and gain a lot of gains. For example, the book mentions Chinese medicine, when turning to read Chinese medicine related books, to understand what these Chinese medicines really mean, to understand why Jia Baoyu said that girls should not take a certain kind of medicine, should give boys to eat; for example, turn to the Grand View Garden, we learned a lot of particularly interesting Chinese architectural knowledge, and then with this knowledge to visit the Chinese garden near Groningen (a city in the north of the Netherlands), we found the design inside very interesting.

The filming location of the TV series "Dream of the Red Chamber" - Beijing Grand View Garden. Photographed by China News Agency

In addition, some of the things in "Dream of the Red Chamber" do not have corresponding words in Dutch, and some words must be "invented" when translating. For example, "Kang", there is no "Kang" in the Netherlands, there is no way to translate, we feel that the Dutch should accept this word, so it is only annotated when it first appears in the book, and then it is directly transliterated as "Kang".

As for the names of the people in the book, the names of the masters are not translated into Dutch, and the names of the servants are translated into Dutch. One of the most difficult to translate is "Raider", which we have been thinking about for three years; this name is to be translated into a beautiful and attractive name in Dutch, which is even more beautiful to say. Sometimes one person thinks it's okay, but the other two people don't, and only three people agree to put it in the book.

China News Service: After the full Dutch translation was published, dutch media reviewed books saying that "Dream of the Red Chamber is a literary masterpiece with both beauty and depth", and China also has a "red study" that specializes in the study of "Dream of the Red Chamber", but you and two other translators have repeatedly said that the target readers of the Dutch full translation are ordinary people. In this way, how to balance the "depth" of "Dream of the Red Chamber" with the "shallowness" of the translation that is easy for ordinary readers to read?

Goshuus: That's a good question. We also considered this issue and finally made a "trade-off". For example, there are many names in "Dream of the Red Chamber", we have made a character relationship diagram at the back of each volume, and all the names are on it, and you can always turn to the back to view it when reading.

But because this translation is for the average reader, although the translation will lose something, we decided not to add too many footnotes. The names in "Dream of the Red Chamber" have many meanings, of course, you can add footnotes, but when you read "Dream of the Red Chamber" immersed in its world, I am afraid that you will not pay much attention to the meaning behind the names, but can't wait to know what will happen next time.

There are also verses in "Dream of the Red Chamber", which have many meanings and many allusions, and a certain poem may be very related to Li Bai and Du Fu, which we can all add footnotes. But for a 10-line or 12-line poem, you can't add 5 footnotes to just one line, which is too much to affect the reading fluency.

Dutch readers are not the same as Chinese readers. "Dream of the Red Chamber" is a masterpiece of Chinese literature, and many people have known "Dream of the Red Chamber" since childhood and have watched the TV series of "Dream of the Red Chamber". But there is no such tradition in the Netherlands, and readers do not know "Dream of the Red Chamber", so our first step is to translate "Dream of the Red Chamber" into Dutch for ordinary readers to read, and then organize activities, such as holding lectures, to explore the "depth" of "Dream of the Red Chamber".

The theme of the Dream of the Red Chamber is clay sculpture "Reading the West Chamber" and the porcelain sculpture "Dai Yu Funeral Flower". Photo by Xu Jianmei, China News Service

China News Service: Now that the full Dutch translation has been available for several months, how do you feel? How did readers react?

Goshu Xisi: I was pleasantly surprised. The response to the translation was better than I thought, and the reader particularly liked it. The first print is sold out, and the publishing house is organizing reprinting.

For Dutch readers, reading Dream of the Red Chamber is like stepping into a completely unfamiliar world. It is a very traditional feudal society in 18th century China, readers may feel that everything is very strange at first, do not understand the behavior of the characters in the book, but generally after reading 100 pages or 150 pages, they will fully enter the world of "Dream of the Red Chamber", be strongly attracted by the characters in the book, "can't stop", can only continue to read the book in its entirety.

Some readers left messages on my Twitter account, telling me that they had just finished reading "Dream of the Red Chamber", completely fascinated by the world of "Dream of the Red Chamber", and now officially "said goodbye"; and the curator of the public library in the northern province of Brabant (the southern province of the Netherlands) especially liked the book and planned to organize a series of activities to let readers understand the background of "Dream of the Red Chamber"; and some readers read the Dutch translation of "Zhuangzi" before, and read "Dream of the Red Chamber" and thought of some details in "Zhuangzi". This makes me feel very interesting, they first read "Zhuangzi", and then read "Dream of the Red Chamber", which can be said to have learned something about traditional Chinese culture.

Inner page of the Dutch translation of Dream of the Red Chamber. China News Service sent a picture of Ge Shuxisi

China News Service: As a literary masterpiece, "Dream of the Red Chamber" can be described as a window of insight into Chinese culture, what role do you think the Dutch translation will play in disseminating Chinese culture to the Dutch public, especially young people?

Goshu Xisi: It can make a big difference. Ordinary Dutch people don't know much about traditional Chinese culture, but reading "Dream of the Red Chamber" can find a lot of resonance. For example, the girl who lives in the Daguan Garden in the book knows in her heart that the good life will soon end, because she wants to get married, and she does not know what will happen after marriage, and her fate may be very tragic, and the feeling of impermanence of life, confusion and anxiety about the future will especially make young people identify.

There is also Jia Baoyu, the family has great expectations of him, I remember when I first read "Dream of the Red Chamber" in my 20s, I thought of the pressure brought by life and the feeling of not being able to grasp the future, and I felt particularly empathetic to Jia Baoyu; of course, there was also the romantic plot in the book, such as who I wanted to be with whom, but for various reasons everything fell short, which made people feel that it was written beautifully.

After starting to translate "Dream of the Red Chamber", I taught the social background of "Dream of the Red Chamber" at the School of Han of Leiden University, and some students were very interested in the relationship between "Dream of the Red Chamber" and Buddhism and Taoism, some students analyzed Wang Xifeng's position in Rongguofu, some students were very interested in the status of women in the book, and some students analyzed the Qing Dynasty laws involved in the book because they also studied law.

There is also "Dream of the Red Chamber" on the description of daily life is very realistic, Dutch readers can understand the life of the Chinese nobility at that time through the details in the book, for example, some readers after reading "Dream of the Red Chamber" after the reaction is "incredible", telling me that although the people in the book feel that they are very lonely, they are surrounded by servants, dressed, eating and even drinking tea, there are people waiting, there must be many people in the house, such an observation perspective even I have not thought.

The English version of the opera "Dream of the Red Chamber" staged at the San Francisco Opera House in the United States. Photo by Liu Dan, a reporter from China News Service

China News Service: From an academic point of view, what is the significance of the dutch translation to the Dutch translation community and even the Sinology community?

Goshu Xisi: I think one of the contributions of this book is to tell everyone that you can turn out such a huge work as "Dream of the Red Chamber", because there is sometimes a saying in the Dutch translation industry that "so-and-so books cannot be translated", and many people used to think that "Dream of the Red Chamber" was "untouchable".

For the three of us, we also discussed whether to hand it over to one person to translate, and then felt that "Dream of the Red Chamber" was too complicated, and one person could collapse if it was turned, two or three people could do it, and four people were too many. Then each of us has something to be good at, Ma Sophie is good at translating poetry, Lin Ke has translated "Siege of the City" and other difficult literary works, I am good at studying traditional Chinese culture and Chinese history, and I also know more about the language and language, so the three of us began to cooperate; now after the Dutch full translation of "Dream of the Red Chamber" is available, there are many Chinese literature and even world literature masterpieces to be translated into Dutch, and we must continue to work hard.

In 2010, at the 9th "Chinese Bridge" World College Students Chinese Competition, the contestants interpreted the classic section of "Dream of the Red Chamber" "Daiyu Funeral Flower". Photo by Fu Yu, a reporter of China News Service

From a literary point of view, the dutch translation can also play a role in promoting the diversification of world literature. After reading "Dream of the Red Chamber", Dutch readers may become interested in other Chinese literary works and are willing to read the Dutch version of these works, which will be a good phenomenon; there is also the TV series of "Dream of the Red Chamber", if you can see such a TV series in the Netherlands, I believe many people will watch it, and then maybe they will read "Dream of the Red Chamber".

Overall, I think it is well worthwhile to learn about another culture and another world through literature. I often say in class that many students do not necessarily like Chinese literature, just like many Dutch students are not interested in Dutch literature, I hope that my course can cultivate their curiosity about Chinese literature, and in the future they may start from this "curiosity" and work as translators or in diplomatic departments and cultural institutions to do something to promote cultural exchanges and mutual learning between China and the West. (End)

Respondent Profiles:

GeShu Xisi, a Dutch translator, currently teaches at the School of Chinese Studies at Leiden University in the Netherlands, and studied at Leiden University and Xiamen University in the 1980s; has translated works by Chinese writers such as Nie Hualing, Zhang Xianliang, Ye Zhaoyan, Su Tong, Bi Feiyu, Bai Xianyong, Zhou Zuoren and other Chinese writers, as well as Chinese classical literature; and teaches courses in modern Chinese, ancient Chinese, and Chinese literature at the Han College of Leiden University.