Chen Ying A translator's concealment and presence

Intern reporter Lu Linmian from Chongqing Editor Zhou Jianping [email protected]

"Real life is not the same as fiction, the past life is not highlighted, but trapped in darkness" - Chen Ying remembers the last sentence of the "Naples Quadrilogy" - In the spring of 2018, although I read the original novel many times, but it was really translated, the missing Lila still did not come back to spend her old age with Lennon, "wanted to cry, and felt sudden, unbelievable", more than 1,600 pages, a "laborious errand", ended.

The Neapolitan Tetralogy is the work of the Italian stealth writer Elena Ferrante, which tells the complex relationship and fate of two girls. For four years, Chen Ying plunged headlong into Naples in the 1960s, living and wandering in those dilapidated urban areas, breathing, arguing, falling in love with the people in the book, and the hot wind of southern Italy was blowing.

This gust of wind, which blew from Naples in 2011, coincided with the rise of feminism around the world and triggered a reading boom in many countries. The novel does not only point to female friendship, the author Ferrante integrates the characters into the changing times, and various historical events are interspersed with them, "Women's problems are actually universal problems, women's novels, but also an Italian historical novel." The English literary magazine Granta describes: "If you haven't read Ferrante, it's like you haven't read Madame Bovary in 1856." ”

Six years later, the first part of the four-part "My Genius Girlfriend", translated by Chinese translator Chen Ying, was released with rave reviews. "I don't have a secret when I read it," "It's not a book, it's a knife." It cut not only away Naples, but also me. In the winter of 2018, HBO launched the first adapted series of TV series "My Genius Girlfriend", which was selected as one of the top ten annual dramas of Time Magazine shortly after its launch, with a Douban rating of 9.3.

The book is on fire, and the third part of the play makes many viewers look forward to it - with the popularity of the book, the translator Chen Ying is also involved in the tide of the times, just like the green lotus raised in the study, stretching out, I don't know which sentence in the gap hooked the reader's heart. "I was amazed at the process of participating in the times. Because you're involved in this era while doing your own thing. As the translator of a world-class best-selling novel, Chen Ying has the dual identity of translator and scholar, not only following the tradition of translators, maintaining invisibility and moderation in translation, and being faithful to the original work; also starting from translation, appearing in social practice and intervening in the era.

The appearance of the translator

For nearly a decade, Chen Ying often lived at the foot of Gele Mountain in Chongqing, living a life of living by the mountains. Starting from this place, it takes 10 minutes to go to the lively Ciqikou Ancient Town; climb along the mountain road for half an hour to reach the quiet top of Gele Mountain - Chen Ying calls himself a semi-"mountain residence", "walking forward into the downtown, walking backwards into the mountains".

The latter common, temperance, concealment, transparency, and absence, are all words that are habitually bound to the translator. Creatively, from one language to another, out of respect for the original, the translation needs to avoid "trespassing"; in life, the parts of the translation that are almost manual labor, as well as the prescribed delivery date, require a high degree of control over the daily life. Chen Ying grasped both very well, never dragged the draft, the work and rest rules, and the translation was widely praised.

On the day of the interview, she took me up Mount Gorath — "to see it all over the place by plane, or by cable car through a text." Translation is like climbing a mountain, it is walking, climbing up the stairs. Chen Ying in front of him is wearing loose sportswear, loves to laugh, loves to say "yes", this is the habit of being a teacher for many years, a sentence stays here, the tone often becomes the highest and brightest, and the eyes are also firm.

After a pleasant sweat on the mountain, Chen Ying still maintained a strong physical strength. She translates three books a year, the workload is large, the physical strength required is also large, no wonder the peer friends said that Teacher Chen's energy, "unfathomable!" ”

Quietly translating in the study is the gesture of the translator in people's imaginations--"To appear, it seems that this is not the tradition of our profession." "This is naturally related to the mysterious Ferrante." Elena Ferrante "is just a pseudonym, and no one can determine the writer's true name, gender, and identity." When the author is invisible, what else can the translator do besides becoming the "best reader", grasping the literary nature of the author's language and conveying the language?

In Chen Ying's view, translation is a craft, a person in the study, silently tied a good-looking small bench. She's not good at doing things that seem hilarious and doesn't take the initiative. But the book that has been turned over is like a stone thrown into the lake of the times, and now it is like a shadow, and life suddenly jumps unexpectedly vast, and every side scratches her and drags her out. Even back in her hometown, relatives asked her, "The girl in your family who flipped through books."

Chen Ying realized that the "Neapolitan Tetralogy" was a turning point that made her move from language to practice, something she hadn't expected when she first started translating. The original author, Elena Ferrante, moved from the previous portrayal of a woman to the complex 60-year-long friendship history of two women. Chen Ying transformed from a postmodern novel to a realistic work. When Barico was translated in the early days, Castle of Rage and A Man Disappeared into the World were both extremely experimental. "Purely spiritual, poetic, abstract, dreamlike", the words float in the clouds with a weightless vertigo. Realist works "allow translators to further connect with real-world problems."

Female Reference

In 2013, after reading the "Neapolitan Tetralogy" for the first time, Chen Ying was fascinated by the enduring competition between the two girls. "This particular attraction in the book lasts a lifetime, full of thought, strength, passion, and the depiction of women bound out of wisdom is very attractive to me." Intimacy, control, betrayal, jealousy and possession, the energy is enormous, "they do not always help each other, they also rob each other, steal energy and wisdom from each other", "Lila and Lennon's relationship is full of fireworks and is an affirmation of life", "This is not a feeling that can be summed up simply by friendship, a woman can become another woman's muse." ”

She feels that "many of the previous imaginations and portrayals of women's relationships were very flat and single. Ferrante dug deeper, and only this complex relationship was the real one. True friends are very rare, and in reality most of them are people who interact with each other. We ourselves, because we are particularly weak in spirit, cannot afford many of these firm relationships. ”

The "Neapolitan Tetralogy" attracted a large number of readers, and Chen Ying was often invited to attend lectures on topics around translation, Ferrante, and Italian women's writing. The more she participated in the practice, the more she felt that the reference in growth was very important, even if it did not come from reality, it could come from literature. "The Neapolitan quadrilogy" can become such a reference, "growing to a certain stage, in fact, there is a great need for a mature woman as your reference, there are many things that can be communicated", including real female relations, "mass media, TV series many plots are denigrating, before the female friendship is not successful, there has been a 'plastic sisterhood' such expression, 'girlfriend' is also mixed with a lot of ambiguous things." Friendships between women are still in a phase of lack of reference. ”

Neapolitan quadrilogy

Readers often share with her how they feel when reading "My Genius Girlfriend", "Fragments", and "Shoelaces". She laughed and laughed at herself, translating books that are all marriage dissuasion manuals, "I think [my translation] may increase the divorce rate and reduce the marriage rate." 」 Although it may be regrettable, it is also a characteristic of this era. "The real feedback from the situation of women, a little bit of her, want to enter social practice as a scholar," In fact, in addition to being a translator, I am still a scholar. "This is not self-praise, listening to Chen Ying's lectures, often readers say, it is like returning to college, taking a high-quality class, full of dry goods."

A room of your own

When translating the "Neapolitan Tetralogy", Chen Ying's most handy part is the fourth "Missing Child". The protagonist withdraws from the jerkiness and blindness of her teenage years, the wandering and ambition of adulthood, into what she calls "real old age", and enters the stage of controlling life. At this time Nino had no place in her mind, a stupid and greasy image. Lennon was reflecting, liquidating his life, and also began to fight the problem of old age. It may also be related to my age, I am curious about her view of the world, and what her life becomes after not pursuing men, thinking about an intellectual life", "If people solve the flashy things, love, reputation, career, what is left?" ”

Chen Ying believes that the fourth part is in line with the current state of mind, the sense of language is easy to find, and the voice of the elderly narrator is calm and vicissitudes. Projected onto oneself, people to middle age, restrained passion, real and strong, closest to the essence of life, "sober and restrained, so that everything is orderly and shining", can grasp the inner truth.

This calm was not easy to come by, and she felt that she had to defend it—"to reach a state of self-consistency, and to defend." "As a woman, getting rid of surveillance and being restricted by people, and completely controlling her own life, Yu Lennon, for her, is a long journey.

In 1999, Chen Ying graduated with a bachelor's degree. After a period of travel agency, he went to a large company to do technical translation, and returned to campus three years later and was admitted to graduate school in Beiwai. Her family is not well off, she matures early, often living a dual life of study and part-time work, and she bears her own tuition and living expenses.

Studying in Europe, I often live in a dimly lit dormitory to save money. When the residence was done, they were crowded in the crowd like displaced people, and the police officers had a rough attitude, and every time they went through the formalities, they were seriously injured. Later, someone wrote an open letter, naming and shaming her, "a woman, in her thirties, still studying for a doctorate overseas." Summing up this period, Chen Ying said, "You can't get rid of it until you are a certain age." Adolescence is bitter and long, and the feeling of being subject to people is particularly poor, there is no self-space, and many things that you want to do cannot be done. ”

Now, in this room, Chen Ying put "The World Speaks a New Language" and "Liaozhai Zhiyi" at the head of the bed, reads some ancient texts every day, is refreshed, and maintains a sense of Chinese; he also looks at Renaissance works, Machiavelli's "Monarch", "History of Florence", Ariosto's "Crazy Roland", and plunges into the vast classical literature. But she still felt that there was not enough time, too much fragment reading, and too little real immersion. When she was a child, she was the one who couldn't sit still, wandering, her thoughts were scattered when reading, and she read a lot of newspapers and periodicals, such as "Novel Monthly", "Appreciation of Famous Works", "Wen Wei Po", "Flower City". She was impressed by Goethe's poetry, as well as some avant-garde literary works from the eighties and nineties, which became the nourishment of her literature. Whenever I translate, I sit on a cold bench, enter the state, become the storyteller of the story, and live the addiction of writing in my youth.

A translator's passion and tranquility

"Living here in The Gele Mountains, but dwelling in the written word, sometimes in the deserted north, sometimes in the chaotic and lustful monasteries of the Middle Ages." When translating the second "The Story of a New Name", Chen Ying felt that the experience of the whole summer was love, a love affair that had a heat in Naples.

Her friend Lydia is a Neapolitan native with a novel-like passion for chaos. Walking on the street, Chen Ying could feel that the feminine temperament was a state of bloom, and a strong impact spread out from the young girls. Lydia explains this strong vitality: Naples is on the crater of Vesuvius, which is "the most dangerous volcano in Europe", which can erupt at any time, burying everything, and they have a decisive posture.

In the summer of 2009, Lydia took her to Naples. A friend's "Mutter" (German for "mother", Lydia) is the daughter of the volcano, crying when sad, jumping when angry, and can say words that are not repeated for hours, jumping out many truths. Mutter drove vigorously, and on the way back to Lydia's house, the alley was narrow, and the car was stuck with only one left rearview mirror, and it was squeezed and squeezed.

Chen Ying often thinks of Lydia and her mother when translating, and Ferrante writes the breath of a city, "Neapolitans and their city are closely aligned, there is a real passion that reverberates throughout the city", "a city with a strong emotional stimulation, where it is easier to get angry, easier to fall in love, its beauty is beautiful, ugly is ugly", "I feel the wind of Naples, feel the dilapidated neighborhood where the protagonist grows, feel the dust, the heat, and the sea." ”

But the pen falls on the paper, on the practice of translation, all in moderation. In the face of the change of rhythm brought about by passion, it is even more important to keep calm. When translating the fourth part, she rode a broken bicycle every day at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, found a library without mosquitoes under Baiyun Mountain, and sat calmly in the library all day. "Translation is a fixed program every day, not today the interest comes, the inspiration comes, write a ten thousand words and then rest for three days, it is a very long-term work, very regular. It's like a manual, it has a process, first write the manuscript out, and then keep changing, do not understand the places have to be refined", "temperance also has a passion in it, there is a real passion for what you do." ”

Most of the time outside of work is quiet. She compares herself to a lizard-born, cold-blooded animal. "After work, after the spring equinox, the best way to spend the day is to find a place with the sun to lie down every day." Ten years ago, after graduating from the doctorate, Chen Ying got half a year's spare time, went to Canal Park and Longtan Lake Park to bask in the sun on the day, took a book, and the uncle who guarded against slipping circles came to ask her "why is the old dry sitting" The annual pass only costs three dollars, and she sits in the pavilion all day drinking tea, and her heart is very beautiful. The book is not very read, just feel the dry heat of the late spring underground with the wicker.

At the beginning of March, As the keynote speaker of Chongqing Jingdian Bookstore, Chen Ying attended the International Women's Day lecture on "Historical Violence and Feminist Writing". During the live interactive session, the dialogue progressed from the "Neapolitan Quadrilogy" to a positive retrospective of the situation of women in reality. On the screen behind her was her just-congratulatory message for Women's Day – "Tougher, happier!" And the well-known "We Can Do It!" "Poster.

On that day, she listed Ding Ling's four teachings on the PPT, with white characters on a black background, not only to female friends on the scene, but also throughout her daily life as a translator:

"First, don't let yourself get sick and live in moderation. Second, to make yourself happy and do something meaningful every day, laziness will only make people feel the blankness, weakness, and withering of life. Third, with the brain, it is best to develop a habit, so that you will not regret it, so that you will not be deceived. Fourth, with the determination to endure hardships and be born as a modern enlightened woman, it is necessary to identify the gentle dream of sacrificing all roses. ”