A fragment of the comic strip Captain Grant's Children, based on Jules Verne's novel of the same name by French illustrator Alexis Neme. (Infographic/Figure)
For eight years, the shadow that hung over Fan Lang's mind was that his father Fan Xiheng's (deceased) translation of "Captain Grant's Children" was infringed by the well-known translator Chen Xiaoqing. In 2015, Fan Lang saw doubts from Verne fans in posts on the Internet - after comparing the model and the translated Lin Ben, some fans found that Chen Ben not only had the problem of "deletion", but more seriously, the Chen Ben translation was very similar to the model, and there was a suspicion of "makeover" plagiarism and plagiarism.
In 1900, when Jules Verne's Journey Around the Eighty Days (published by the Shiwen Society) was first introduced to China, Verne's science fiction works began to be introduced to Chinese readers one after another, including liang qichao, Lu Xun and other celebrities. Even worldwide, Verne is the second most translated writer, between Agatha Christie and Shakespeare. Verne's most famous science fiction trilogy is Captain Grant's Children, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and Mysterious Island.
The two scholars in this whirlpool are well-known French translators in China. Fan Xiheng graduated from the Department of Spanish Languages of Peking University in 1927, and later went to belgium to study at the University of Reuven, where he received a double doctorate in linguistics and literature from the Department of Latin, and taught at Aurora University and Nanjing University in Shanghai after the founding of the People's Republic of China. Chen Xiaoqing also graduated from the Department of Spanish Language of Peking University in 1963, is a professor at the School of International Relations, enjoys a special allowance from the State Council, and is a member of the expert group of the Examination Center of the Ministry of Personnel.
Fan Lang told Southern Weekend that she did not want to go to court, but "[with the other party] could not discuss, (they) thought that I was not engaged in literature and did not understand French." In fact, Fan Lang said that he had studied French with his father since he was a child, and even because he was a science major, his father specially taught her how to translate fragments of Verne's novels, and later, Fan Lang went to work in French-speaking countries for two or three years.
From 2015 to 2017, Fan Lang spent more than two years comparing the model with the Chen Ben published by the Central Compilation Publishing House and the Changjiang Literature and Art Publishing House, as well as the original French edition published in 1868, and found that from the table of contents to the main text, translation notes, etc., Chen Ben had a large number of expressions that were the same or substantially similar to the model, and even the errors in the model were surprisingly consistent.
"Comparing it to the original book is very difficult, even harder than translating a book yourself." Fan Lang said that one of her eyes was "blood vessel bursting" because of long-term view of the text. Her sisters tried to persuade her, but she said she "must get this to the end". Fan Lang had contacted the editor of the China Youth Publishing House, to which Fan belonged, and Verne's other works were also "chased". The editor said that he had contacted the children of translators of other works, but none of them were willing to do so, "spending more time and collecting less benefits."
According to Fan Lang's statistics, Chen Ben is published by more than twenty publishing houses, but the page number of each book is different, and he does not have so much energy to compare them all. In 2017, Fan Lang sued two of these publishing houses and Chen Xiaoqing in court, until January 26, 2022, when the Shanghai Xuhui District People's Court issued a first-instance judgment, ruling on the infringement of Chen Xiaoqing and Changjiang Literature and Art Publishing House; On June 24, the Beijing Intellectual Property Court issued a second-instance judgment ruling on chen Xiaoqing and the Central Compilation Publishing House for infringement.
Although the compensation demanded by the court has been received so far, the 82-year-old has not yet waited for Chen Xiaoqing's public apology, and she has applied to the court for compulsory enforcement. Chen Xiaoqing's lawyer said that Chen Xiaoqing "suffered from Alzheimer's disease" and was in poor physical condition, and Chen Xiaoqing's family explicitly refused to be interviewed by the Southern Weekend reporter, and the publishing house has not yet responded to the southern weekend reporter's interview request.
The well-known translator Chen Xiaoqing's translation of "Captain Grant's Children" was ruled by the court to copy the translation of the late well-known translator Fan Xiheng. The picture above is the shadow of Fan Xiheng's translation of the book, and the picture below is the shadow of Chen Xiaoqing's translation of the book. (Infographic/Figure)
"Right or wrong"
In the judgment of Fan Lang, the Central Compilation Publishing House and Chen Xiaoqing, the court of first instance held that the translated works reflected great originality, but when judging whether the translated works constituted substantial similarities, the court no longer analyzed the plot and language of the two, but from the perspectives of "contact possibility" and "detail comparison".
The model was first published in August 1956 and completed the seventh printing in December 1979, which was published much earlier than the Chen translation, so the court found that Chen Xiaoqing had the possibility of contact with the model.
Dong Xue, a lawyer at his own law firm, told Southern Weekend that "access possibility" is the first condition for all copyright infringement. However, compared with other types of works, translated works do not compare the structure of the article, specific characters, scene descriptions, etc., because "the translated work is a work formed on the basis of the interpretation of the original work, and should not jump out of the original work, in this case, the comparison of plots is not much meaningful, so it is necessary to compare the details." Even if a legal document is translated, the results of the translation will vary from person to person."
Dong Xue's first reaction after seeing the victory in the lawsuit was to forward the relevant news to his colleagues, lamenting that the judge's trial was meticulous, and listening to and adopting Fan Lang's translation and comparative opinions. According to Dong Xue's experience, there are relatively few cases of translation infringement itself, because it is "extremely difficult to prove" and the details need to be "particularly detailed". In addition to proposing more than two hundred similar parts of the text that appear in the main paragraphs, Fan Lang also "pulled out" more important details.
Chen Ben and the Model have many similarities with the addition, deletion, and supplement of the original French annotations. For example, Shanghai Shangwai Translation Corporation, a third-party organization designated by the court, as a translator of the original French version, found that the original French text annotated "magistrate" as "official investigating criminal cases", and Chen Ben and the model consistently deleted the annotation, and the term "British prosecutor" was used; For another example, the original French annotation of "Highlands" is "Scottish Highlands", the model is not translated according to the original work, the location of the Highlands is further annotated as "the name of the southern region of Scotland", and Chen Ben also explains "the name of a region in southern Scotland"...
In a questioning post published in October 2014, the Verne fan said that he had spoken to the editor of the China Youth News Agency, who mentioned that when reading verne translations of other publishing houses, he often found that "every mistake is wrong". That is, the translation errors that appeared in the Middle and Young Editions also appeared in other versions later, which can be described as "copying both right and wrong".
The key to winning the lawsuit is that Chen Ben also "accepts all the mistakes in the model" as promised. For example, the two translated together as "5 degrees 73 minutes south latitude" (correctly 5 degrees 37 minutes south latitude), "16 February 1616" (correct should be February 12, 1616), "twentieth century" (correct should be nineteenth century); For another example, the model translation is "after a few hours", the Chen ben translation is "a few hours later", and the correct translation is actually "a few minutes later"; The model translation is "two feet five inches high", and Chen Ben's translation of "about two feet and five inches high" should actually be "up to two feet and a half" (that is, two feet six inches)...
The first-instance judgment of the Xicheng District People's Court in Beijing mentioned that "Chen Xiaoqing, as a professional proficient in French, has the same errors as the model and the number and scope of the same errors are so large that it is difficult to explain them by accident and other reasons."
"This way of finding mistakes is very clever, the translator wrote wrong when creating independently, or the understanding of the original work is wrong, and under normal circumstances, it is impossible for other translators to follow the mistake." Dong Xue told southern weekend reporters that in the past, some copyright lawsuits between Internet companies sometimes deliberately "buried a mine" in the text, and the means to determine whether it was infringed was to find this "thunder", "For the judge, it will be better to judge whether it is copied."
According to the judgment of the first instance of the Xicheng District People's Court in Beijing on August 18, 2020, Chen Xiaoqing and the Central Compilation Publishing House immediately stopped copying and publishing the book "Captain Grant's Children" on the effective date of the judgment, and published an apology statement in the non-central seam position of the Beijing Evening News for 10 consecutive days, compensating the plaintiff Fan Lang for economic losses of 80,000 yuan and reasonable expenses of 22,000 yuan. Later, after winning the second instance, Fan Lang specially returned to the post he had seen to respond to the fans and "expressed his gratitude" to the book.
"Mid-turn"
At the second instance, the court held that the details of the comparison may be insufficient, "the way the right holder claimed infringement was not a direct copy of the content of the model translation of a large paragraph or a chapter, but rather that the title of the chapter, the notes, and some paragraphs and even sentences in the main text were copied from the previous translation, which cannot completely exclude that the same part is caused by the limited expression of the original translation", which is also the main reason for Chen Xiaoqing's appeal.
Dong Xue told Southern Weekend that it is possible that the "limited nature of translation" will cause similarities between the two versions. When different translators translate the same work, it is inevitable to use the same personal names, place names, proper nouns, etc. In the case of the defendants dong Xue represented before, it took a long time to explain to the judge what was "limited expression" and what was "universal expression", and even used a "palette" to distinguish the differences between the words and sentences in the two versions with different colors, "but in view of the 'limited nature of translation', whether it is to prove that the translation is plagiarized or not, it is quite difficult, and it is difficult for the judge to simply judge whether there is plagiarism."
Unlike the first instance, the court of second instance selected two versions, the Wang translation and the Bi translation, both of which were produced after the model and were not consistent with the original French text. The court requested that the model and the chen be compared with the chapter names, translated notes, and text of the two versions. Instead, Mr. Fan said, the two versions "punched him (Chen Xiaoqing) in the face."
After four versions of the comparison, the non-proprietary personal names and place names involved in the chapter directory such as "Markham Province" and "Baganel", etc., chen ben and the model are highly consistent or similar, but the other two translations have different translation methods, "difficult to explain by coincidence". In the use of comments, whether the content of the original text annotation is directly put into the main text, or the original commentary is further extended and interpreted, the original text and the model have the same original annotation method, and the other two versions are not exactly the same. After the comparison of the main text, compared with the other two translations, there are still many similarities between the Chen ben and the model, which is "difficult to explain with the limited translation".
Fan Lang won again. For the old man who has spent eight years on this, it is finally a stage victory. Translating the book in previous years, Van Heehan believed that Verne's science fiction novels with the theme of "strange travels in the known and unknown worlds" "can inspire young people to imagine science." At that time, he searched all over the libraries in Beijing, Shanghai, and Nanjing, and finally found a suitable version in the Xujiahui Library building in Shanghai. At that time, Fan Xiheng wrote a translation on the raw paper with a brush and told Fan Lang about the wonderful fragments of the novel, "as if he was wandering on the sea and enjoying the strange and beautiful scenes that had never been seen before."
According to Fan Lang, Verne's science fiction novels involved French, Spanish, indigenous languages and other languages, which were difficult to translate, and Fan Xiheng did not have a French-Chinese dictionary to refer to, he believed that "the book is very rigorously written, the language is also very beautiful, but it is still difficult to translate." For example, "corillèe" is transliterated and transliterated as "high and low rock", and Chen Benzhong is changed to "high and low rock", which Fan Lang considers to be a "joke".
Fan Lang once read Fan Xiheng's correspondence with the People's Literature Publishing House, talking about translating Rousseau's Confessions, Fan Lang said: "It was not so easy for them to publish [confessions] at that time, but now take a Chinese book and change it in their own language, which is called 'middle translation', so I feel intolerable when I see these things, after all, your identity is a professor in a college or university." ”
An editor of a publishing house told Southern Weekend that usually social science books have a process of double checking, and it is easier to find the possibility of plagiarism, but it is clear that literary books are "more difficult to review plagiarism." On the other hand, well-known translators such as Chen Xiaoqing have many titles, and their works are "sought after" by publishing houses.
"In the case of a republished foreign text, the author or copyright owner should be required to provide the original foreign language version, and the editor should compare the original text with the translation. In fact, some publishing houses have a large turnover of personnel, many responsible editors only hang their names, and the actual production operation is completed by less senior personnel. If the profession is not correct or the original text cannot be understood, it is easy to have problems. The editor told Southern Weekend reporters.
What made Fan Lang indignant was that during the Shanghai first-instance trial, Chen still signed a reprint of the book with the Changjiang Literature and Art Publishing House and collected the manuscript fee. Ms. Fan said her appeal now is that Chen's book should no longer be published in a publishing house.
In 1971, Fan Xiheng died. In June 2022, the court of second instance ruled that from the time of Fan Xiheng's death to December 31, 2021, the copyright of the works involved in the case had exceeded a 50-year term of protection, so the publishing house and Chen Xiaoqing no longer bear the civil liability for stopping the reproduction and distribution of the allegedly infringing books.
Dong Xue told Southern Weekend reporters: "Now, Fan Xiheng's original works have entered the public domain, and everyone can use them. However, if Chen Xiaoqing and the publishing house continue to use it, strictly speaking, Fan Xiheng's right of signature should be respected. ”
At the same time, fan lang was puzzled that compared with the first-instance and second-instance judgments of the Beijing court, the shanghai court's first-instance court held that it was "difficult for this court to support the plaintiff's request for an apology and the elimination of the impact" for the plaintiff.' The court held that Fan Xiheng had passed away, that the apology had a personal nature and did not have the nature of being performed on behalf of others, that Chen Xiaoqing himself had no capacity for civil conduct and was unable to apologize, and that Fan Lang did not adduce evidence that the defendant had brought adverse effects.
In this regard, Dong Xue explained that how to protect the moral rights of the author after his death, the entry points of the two courts are different. The Beijing court's judgment places more emphasis on the protection of rights itself, and the authorship rights of deceased authors have not disappeared, but are still protected by law, and heirs have the right to advocate on their behalf, thus supporting the request for an apology. The Shanghai court, on the other hand, valued the personal nature of the act of apologizing, and the deceased person could no longer accept the apology, and from the perspective of the enforcement of the judgment, held that the defendant himself had no capacity for civil conduct and was actually unable to carry out the apology.
"If a society tolerates plagiarism and has a successful precedent of winning by plagiarism, it will lead to more plagiarism." Fan Lang said, "I won the case, (but) I still feel that the strength is not enough." Asking him to publish a newspaper to apologize, until now (all) has not been done, I have written a letter asking the court to enforce it, and there is no result until now. To this day, Fan Lang is still waiting for the notice of the second instance trial of the Shanghai Intellectual Property Court.
Southern Weekend reporter Zhang Rui