"Yeats Poetry Interpretation", by Fu Hao, Shanghai Foreign Language Education Publishing House, November 2021
Yeats
Recently, I had the opportunity to read Mr. Fu Hao's masterpiece "Interpretation of Yeats's Poems" (Shanghai Foreign Language Education Publishing House, November 2021 edition), which is quite instructive, just to give one example to illustrate. Fu Hao, in his interpretation of Yeats's famous poem Why You Are Old, believes that translating the time adjective clause of when the time adjective of when translating the time adjective into Chinese should be "when... when" or "when... when". He criticized many popular Chinese translations for translating this clause as "when...", missing "when" or "when" to mark the end of the clause and thus become a sick sentence. Fu Hao quotes the linguist Mr. Lü Shuxiang in his Grammatical Rhetorical Speech on the use of the word "dang": "The word dang" is often used on the head of a sentence... Use "in" or "when" on the head to bring the reader's attention. That's good. But pay attention: "When" must be under the word "when" to cooperate with it, you can't just use the word "when" like the sentence at the bottom. "When these people are talking about 'security' and 'peace,' they are actually preparing to launch a war of aggression." Fu Hao thus concluded that the word "when" can be omitted, while the word "when" cannot be omitted (Commentary on Yeats's Poems, pp. 122-123). It's true.
Translating the English Vern clause as "when..." is certainly a sick sentence, even if "... when "or"... when", not a sick sentence, but it is not necessarily authentic Chinese. "When... Shi (shi) belongs to the typical "translation body", this way of expression because it has been a long time, has been used by users, in newspapers and magazines and self-media expressions everywhere, such as "Douban" someone wrote: When women want to break through some of the shackles of the world, when she wants to break some gender prejudices, when she wants to have complete uterine freedom, when she wants to have some relatively equal rights, the "iron chain" will faintly appear, rattling. The "when" here does not have a "when" or "when" is cooperated with it, according to Fu Hao or Mr. Lü Shuxiang, which is a sick sentence. In addition, a series of "dang", to paraphrase Mr. Yu Guangzhong's saying that "the voice of dangdang, incessantly", seems very cumbersome. Mr. Siguo pointed out in "Translating the Tao To Explore the Micro" that the whoen in English can be used and used again, and does not feel that there is anything wrong with it; Chinese if you use several "when... time", the reader will be impatient. The reason is simple, Chinese don't need to explain what moment something happened. For example, "When he saw me, he cried out," that's not wrong. But we don't say that. We would say, "When he saw me, he cried out." As soon as he sees this Chinese without a time, the reader knows when he shouted (Translation Of The Tao, pp. 48-49, China Foreign Translation and Publishing Company, 2002 edition). Back to Yeats's poem Why You Are Old, translated as "when you are old", it is better to translate it as "wait until you are old" is more in line with Chinese expression habits.
Mr. Yu Guangzhong pointed out in the book "Translation is the Avenue" that the biggest problem with the "translation style" of non-donkeys and non-horses and not In the West is formulaization, that is, the translator believes that a certain word or a certain word in the A character is a "full equivalent language" that happens to be waiting there in the B script. He also cites the English who is not the same, arguing that in the formulaic "translation body", the same, in the case of approximate reflection, always uses "when... When the time comes, "a generation goes up." Try to look at the example sentence: "When he saw me coming back, he ran to me", "When he heard the news, what was the expression on his face?" In the two example sentences, "When... when" formulas are all drawn snakes. Yu Guangzhong believes that the popular "translation style" is how to express ambiguous ideas with superfluous words and sentences. The formulaic "translation body", since seeing when, "dang", five steps and one dang, ten steps and dang, dangdang sound, so the sound of the dang is endless. Yu Guangzhong went on to warn that this unwarranted disaster is seriously threatening the rhythm of the beautiful Chinese. Cao Xueqin wrote such a big novel, there is no shortage of such a word. Today, as soon as our novelists shake their pens, they shake out a few pawns, which shows how rampant this "translation style" is. Moreover, the number of other senseless disasters that have been transmitted from this "translation body" Chinese, and it is impossible to elaborate on them all. For example, the word if can be translated as "if", "if", "if", "if", "if", etc. in different occasions, but in the formulaic "translation", it is always "if". Another example is the word and, which should often be translated as "and", "and" or "again", but in the "translation style", the word "and" is often used for a generation (Translation is the Avenue, pp. 49-51, Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2014 edition). The discussion in the afterglow can be described as incisive!
There is also the English character as, which is a formulaic "translation" that is often translated as "as". Mr. Dong Qiao said in the "Yinghua Shenfu Record": "As" is a very worrying word, and the culprit is the English as. The two examples given by Mr. Dong are enough to remind us of the burden of "acting" in Chinese. "To abolish as soon as possible Hong Kong's status as a port of first asylum" does not use "as", but simply says "cancel Hong Kong's status as a first port as soon as possible" is more like Chinese. Mr. Dong also said: We will not say to a beautiful lady, "As a great beauty, you really don't have to spend too much money on cosmetics!" We would say, "You're a big beauty, you don't have to spend too much money on cosmetics!" Unfortunately, the expression "as a translation" has become commonplace in Chinese. Here, we may wish to give an example of Mr. Qian Zhongshu's translation to see how Mr. Qian handles the connecting words when, if, but, and so. When I am assailed with heavy tribulations, I rush out among my pigs, rather than remain alone by myself. The human heart is like a millstone in a mill; when you put wheat under it, it turns and grinds and bruises the wheat to flour; if you put no wheat, it still grinds on, but then ’tis itself it grinds and wears away. So the human heart, unless it be occupied with some employment, leaves space for the devil, who wriggles himself in, and brings with him a whole host of evil thoughts, temptations and tribulations, which grind out the heart. This is a remark by the German religious reformer Martin Luther, translated into English by the British essayist and critic William Hazlitt, and Mr. Qian's Chinese translation is: I have suffered great unsatisfactory things, rushed to feed my pigs, and did not want to live alone. The heart of the human heart is like a mill of stones, and the wheat in the middle is milled into a face; in the middle of nothingness, the stones are still twisted and turned, and the ears are damaged in vain. If the human heart has no special service, the devil sneaks in, and carries evil thoughts and all kinds of troubles, and this mind is eroded by it (Tan Yi Lu, p. 599, Zhonghua Bookstore, 1984 edition). Such a translation can really be said to have entered the so-called "transformation realm" of Mr. Qian himself in "Lin Shu's Translation".
Mr. Yu Guangzhong also talked about the harm of "translation style" in many articles, for example, in "Translation and Creation", he referred to things translated with "blunt, clumsy, and incomprehensible Chinese" as "bad translation", and this "bad translation" used "translation style" in its entirety. The "translation body" has spread in the cultural world, surrounded by newspapers, television, radio and other mass communication tools, people who are particularly sensitive to beautiful Chinese really don't know how much abuse to endure every day! In "Reporting Modern Life with Modern Chinese", Mr. Yu pointed the finger at the news media, believing that many of the Chinese used by the news media are "translation styles", mainly in "foreign tones", the syntax is Europeanized, but the language is often literary. The Europeanization of syntax is because the translator's skill cannot resolve the complicated Western syntax, so he has to draw the gourd in the same way. The language is too literary, because the translator fantasizes that the text is more space-saving; in fact, the translator's language has not learned home. In "The Decline of the Chinese of Lamentation", he directly stated that this "translation style" commonly found in newspapers, that is, the mixed style composed of westernized grammar of literary vocabulary, was not only practiced in translation, but also infected editorials and general articles. He gave an example: "More than a hundred delegates from forty-five countries, as well as observers, participated in this week-long international conference and engaged in a series of discussions on a number of important issues concerning adult education. This passage, which Mr. Yu Guangzhong regards as a "translation style," seems to our readers today to be a smooth Chinese. Mr. Yu also pointed out other forms of expression of the "translation body" in articles such as "On the Westernization of Chinese", "Westernization Chinese by Early Writers", "The Normality and Perversion of Chinese", and "On the Endless": the indigestible passive voice in the translation; sentences with no punctuation in one breath of forty or fifty words, unpunctuated sentences in the middle; indigestion sentences; top-heavy modifiers; all the lattice pronouns that add snakes to the snake; the jerky and ambiguous literary theory; and the tone without rhythm. The examples given are all interesting: "I was insomnia by this discovery"; "Finally, the wine was drunk and the dishes were eaten"; "A message about the United Nations"; "A short woman who appeared to be in her fifties but was not actually more than forty years old"; "Any stranger riding past his shop on a rainy day", and so on. Mr. Yu concluded by warning: "If the formulaic translation is not improved in time, sooner or later it will always endanger all the 'writers' with weak resistance." If the trend of domination is formed, the future of Chinese literature will be in doubt. (Translation is the Avenue, p. 55)
Mr. Yu's articles were first written in the 1960s, but in fact, this "translation style" in Chinese has long existed. Mr. Wu Yan, a translator, said in the article "Starting from the So-called "Translation Style"" that Mr. Mao Dun published "Talking about the National Forms of Literature" in the People's Daily on February 24, 1959, which wrote: "For example, the text of some of our works is the so-called translation style, which is not popular with the common people. (Luo Xinzhang, ed., Collected Essays on Translation, 720 pp., The Commercial Press, 2021 edition) This is probably an earlier reference to "translation style." Wu Yan's analysis of Mao Dun's words contains at least two meanings: First, due to the problem of the use of language and writing in translated works, over time, the so-called "translation body" has emerged, but this "translation body" is not popular with the common people. Second, this "translation style" has already influenced the text of literary creation and has had a bad impact. Wu Yan said that the emergence of the "translation style" proves that we translators have not yet set particularly strict demands on ourselves, and we must pay attention to and ponder this problem. Wu Yan believes that how to eliminate the "translation body" is a big problem, which needs to be discussed and studied by everyone, and gradually solved through translation practice. He pointed out that the "translation style" is a foreignized Chinese, and does not have the characteristics and literary style of the Chinese and Chinese script, which is specifically manifested as "it is quite difficult to read, and it is dry, not vivid, not lively, neither colorful nor concise, nor concise and simple, let alone charming." Another manifestation of the "translation style" is that the text is very strong, the distance from the spoken language is very large, and it is very similar to the speeches of intellectuals at the conference, or there is a so-called "new literary and artistic cavity" or "stage cavity", which is not much like the language in life. As a result, it is also impossible to read. Wu Yan proposed in the article that language must be learned with hard work. We need to learn useful things in folk, ancient, and foreign languages. The purpose of our study is not only to do a good job in our translation work, not only to eliminate the so-called "translation style", but also to enrich and develop the ancestral Chinese, especially the literary language. Of course, this statement is very pertinent, but in the process of learning the foreign Chinese, how to absorb "useful things", on the basis of maintaining the Chinese "normal" and well integrated into the Chinese, so that it becomes a fresh and expressive Chinese, so as not to cause Chinese "perverted" to be difficult to read, this is a difficult process. Let's listen to what Mr. Yu Guangzhong said in "The Normality and Perversion of Chinese": Chinese has developed for thousands of years, from qingtong to gaomiao, and has its own set of norms that have been tempered by thousands of hammers. Whoever pretends to be a change without knowing what normalcy is may result in a clumsy offering, not a coincidence. The magic of change must be set off by normalcy. Once the normal does not exist, all that remains is chaos, not change.
The "translation body" still exists in the translator's translation and the author's creation, although it cannot be said that there is a tendency to spread, but it is still far from "extinction". Maintaining the "normality" and purity of Chinese still requires the continued efforts of writers.