Zhang Weijie: Many good works of Chinese literature have not yet been translated into Spanish and Portuguese

Zhang Weijie. Courtesy of respondents

According to the South American Overseas Chinese Daily network on July 10, "Many years later, facing the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía will recall the distant afternoon when his father took him to see the ice." Whether you've read One Hundred Years of Solitude or not, this classic with a strong sense of fatalism will certainly not be unfamiliar. This magnificent work by the Colombian writer Márquez had a more or less impact on the Chinese writers who rose up in that era, such as Mo Yan, Yu Hua, and Chen Zhongzhong, and was also included in the must-read list of literary and artistic young people. And this is inseparable from the Latin American "literary explosion" 60 years ago.

"Chinese and Latin American writers share common concerns"

The Latin American "literary explosion" refers to the phenomenon of a large number of excellent works of Latin American literature in the 1960s and early 1970s. In the view of Zhang Weijie, associate professor of the Department of Spanish at the School of Foreign Chinese of Nanjing University, the Latin American "literary explosion" proves to the world that the novel still has a strong vitality and can continue to have an impact on the public. On the other hand, the Latin American "literary explosion" allowed the world to "rediscover" Latin America, allowing readers around the world to see in the novel a continent full of problems, dramatic conflicts, and hopes.

Zhang Weijie believes that the success of Latin American writers has a special enlightening significance for contemporary Chinese literature. Chinese writers at the starting point of the era of reform and opening up share the same major concerns as Latin American writers of the mid-20th century: the modernization of literature. How to get rid of the old realist routines? How to use modernist literary means to tell the story of your own land? How to use literature to find the roots of one's own culture? The excellent works of Latin America's "literary explosion" in dealing with these problems provide a model for Chinese writers facing the same confusion. In addition, the Latin American "literary explosion" has put an aura on the entire Latin American literature, and many works have been translated into Chinese. As a result, contemporary Chinese literature draws a lot of experience from Latin American literature, "We can see the shadow of "One Hundred Years of Solitude" in "White Deer Plain", find a deep connection between the two literary regions of Mo Yan's Gaomi Northeast Township and Márquez's Macondo, and see the author's tribute to Borges in the Detective Novel of the Mai family..."

"Excellent literary works can hit the reader's heart"

Zhang Weijie has translated the works of Latin American writers such as "Burning Fields" and "Mirror: Illuminating the History of the World You Can't See" into Chinese, and is a witness and practitioner of Sino-Latin American literary exchanges. In this process, Zhang Weijie found that the reading disabilities caused by cultural differences and lack of background knowledge are real. In the case of One Hundred Years of Solitude, a big reason why many Chinese readers can't read it is that they can't remember the names of the characters in the novel, and they confuse the person with that person—these names are not only longer, but also repeated. People in Spanish-speaking countries often have more than one name, and they also have to carry both the father's and the mother's surname in their full name, and it is common for grandchildren, fathers and sons, and even three generations of grandchildren to share the same name. It is difficult for Chinese readers to adapt to this naming habit at once. In addition, many of the bizarre stories in "One Hundred Years of Solitude" either correspond to Latin American history or parodies of other classics such as the Bible, and if the reader is not familiar with these, he will feel that the book is full of absurd and meaningless events, and he will not be able to read it, or he will forget it after reading it. In the process of bringing Chinese literature to Latin American readers, there are similar problems, most Latin American readers have a very limited understanding of Chinese history and geography, and cannot deeply understand the spirit of the times expressed in literary works. ”

However, "these are not major issues, and the literary nature of a good work can cross the language to hit the reader's aesthetic heart." Zhang Weijie believes that readers will also find common concerns in exotic works, such as chinese and Latin American contemporary literature has a lot of writing about urban life, many problems of urban management, extremely complex interpersonal relationships and emotional connections between urban people, and the unique loneliness of urban people, can be read in these works, and can also resonate with readers in both regions. China and Latin America are far apart, but literature can truly shorten the psychological distance between the people of the two places, "it can really promote people-to-people communication."

Aristotle had a classic assertion in Poetics that literature is more real and philosophical than history, because literature speaks of universal things, and history speaks of concrete, accidental things. If Chinese readers really understand the absurd stories in "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and understand what kind of social reality Llosa's "City and Dog" represents, then they will have a deeper understanding of the history and current situation of Latin America, the unique customs, psychological characteristics and identity of Latin Americans, and they will also realize that China and Latin America face many common problems in the process of transformation from traditional society to modern society. Zhang Weijie said.

"There is still a lot of work to be done in the exchange of literature between China and Latin America"

"Latin American 'literary explosion' writers like grand narratives, putting the history of the entire continent into the story of a village, and this grand narrative has also been favored by Chinese writers for a long time. To say something different, I think Chinese writers have a less sense of humor than Spanish writers. Of course, we can see a lot of humorous things in Chinese literature, and some writers are also very funny, but the overall impression of contemporary Chinese writers is still serious and too serious, unlike Latin American writers, whether they are interviewed by reporters or writing, they like to joke, and treat interviews and writing as very interesting things. Zhang Recalls translating the prose work "False Documents" by Mexican female writer Valeria Luiseli. During the translation process, there was a very strange word, and he sent an email to the writer to inquire, and the young female writer quickly gave a casual reply: she was not sure if the word meant that word, and the translator could "watch and do it".

In Zhang Weijie's view, there are still many works in Latin American literature that have not been translated into Chinese, and there are more good works in Chinese literature that have not yet been translated into Spanish or Portuguese, and there is still a lot of work to be done in the exchange of Chinese and Latin American literature. After the publication of the book "Fake Documents", Zhang Weijie searched on the Internet and found that this keyword was blocked by the system to block the search results, thinking that the book could not be sold. "Last year, when I was in a more remote part of Nanjing, there was a pioneer bookstore, and I was very pleased to see this "Fake Id" I translated on the shelf, and the sample book had been turned over to the cover and rotten." He said. (Wang Han/Text)

Source: China News Network