From the end of the 19th century to the 1920s, the Fujian scholar Lin Shu used interpreters who knew foreign languages to write a large number of foreign literary works with the expertise of ancient writers, which attracted wide attention. His translations are in opposition to Yan Fu's "Yan Translation Masterpieces", known as "Lin Translation Novels".
This year marks the 121st anniversary of the advent of "Lin Translated Novels", and the Caolu Culture And the Commercial Press launched the "Selected Ten Kinds of Lin Translation Novels" in June.
Selected Ten Novels by Lin Translation
Selected Ten Selected Novels by Lin (hereinafter referred to as "New Selection") is edited by Zhang Zhi, Associate Professor of the Department of Chinese, School of Literature and Journalism and Communication, Ocean University of China, and the selected works include Lin Shucheng's famous translation, Dumas's "The Relics of the La Traviata" (i.e., "La Traviata"), Washington Owen's "The Remnants of the Forbidden City" (i.e., "Alhambora"), Swift's (Swift's) "Records of overseas Xuanqu" (i.e., the first half of Gulliver's Travels), and Savantes's (Cervantes' Biography of the Devil" (i.e., "Don Quixote"),. Hugo's "Death of the Two Males" (i.e., "Ninety-Three Years") and so on. The whole set of books refers to the original reproduction of the Republic of China period, and is strictly designed according to the size of the original book, hoping that readers can relive the historical context and aesthetic scenes of that time through the books.
The publishing industry has made many selections and collections of "Lin Translation Novels"
"Lin Translation Novel" has a special relationship with the Commercial Press. At the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the People's Republic, the Commercial Press published the "Shubu Series" and collected more than 300 kinds of "translated novels", of which more than 120 kinds were translated by Lin, that is, a set of "Lin Translation Novel Series" was established in this way. At that time, the "Lin Translation Novel" involved a large number of classic works by European and American masters, almost all of which were first introduced to China. In 1981, the Commercial Press had a new edition of the "Lin Translation Novel Series", which selected ten of them and re-typeset them, which was greatly welcomed by the reading community.
Zhang Zhi told the surging news reporter that the contemporary publishing industry has selected and collected many "Lin translation novels", and the biggest influence is the Commercial Press's 1981 "Lin Translation Novel Series". That set of books contained ten kinds of Lin translation novels, a total of eleven volumes, and one more volume of "Lin Shu's Translation", which included the research articles of Zheng Zhenduo, Qian Zhongshu, Ah Ying and Ma Tailai.
The works included in "Selected Ten Novels of Lin Translation" are all representative works of Lin Shu's many translations
"The characteristics of that set of books are: simplified and horizontal collation, punctuation in modern Chinese, suitable for ordinary readers to read; the selection of titles is exquisite, including "The Testament of the Traviata in Paris", "The Rest of the Flesh", "The Yinbian Yan Language", "It is not as good as returning", "The Record of the Black Slave Calling Heaven", "The Hero After the Saxon Disaster", "The Small Biography of Jiayin", "The Palm Record", "Leaving the Hate Heaven", and "Present Sayings", which are the ten most widely known Lin translation novels; and "The Translation of Lin Shu", which is summarized as research materials, has high academic value."
Zhang Zhi said that "Lin Shu's Translation" includes four articles, Zheng Zhenduo's article is the first conclusive work after Lin Shu's death, Qian Zhongshu's article with the title of the book commends Lin Shu's seemingly outdated translation style that actually stands the test of time, Ah Ying, as the earliest collection of modern literary materials, provides some historical material explanations for Lin Shu's first translated works, and Ma Tailai's "Complete Catalogue of Lin Shu's Translated Works" is the first professional catalog to sort out lin's translated novels and their original manuscripts.
What's special about this "new pick"?
The "New Selection" continues on a ten-scale scale, but in many places there are different considerations. Zhang Zhi said that the first anthology adopts the form of the original book reproduction, in addition to the natural difference in the quality of the paper, the layout, size, cover, and even the advertising page in the book are consistent with the layout of the Commercial Press a hundred years ago. "Most of the original books used the predecessor of the 'Lin Translation Novel Series', the 'Shubu Series', and the individual 'Lin Translation Novel Series' books were appropriately selected to show different faces, while the "Testament of the Lady of the Traviata in Paris" used the first typeset edition of the Commercial Press in December 1923. Previously, the Commercial Press also issued a box of commemorative special collections when celebrating the 120th anniversary of the establishment of the museum, including a replica photocopy of "The Relics of the Traviata", using the fifth edition in 1928. “
The reason why he insists on reproducing the original book, Zhang Zhi said, is because the "Lin Translation Novel" not only belongs to the results of extensive absorption of the nourishment of "European wind and beautiful rain" in the process of Chinese literary modernization, but also witnesses the development process of China's modern publishing industry. The use of the original book reproduction method can convey the information and text form of the times as close as possible to history.
Secondly, the "New Selection" also makes adjustments on the basis of not deliberately avoiding the representativeness of the traditional classic selection, and tries to take into account the distribution of famous artists, countries, different themes and different forms, reflecting the richness of Lin's translated novels.
Lin Shu
Zhang Zhi said that some adjustments are related to everyone's literary tastes over the years, such as "The Remnants of the Forbidden City" is a very exquisite and unique and unique and and androgynistic and androgynistic historical masterpiece, Lin Shu is translated in the style of a note novel, with a unique charm, and today it seems that it is more interesting than the popular "Palm Record"; "Funny Foreign History" is praised by Qian Zhongshu as a model of Lin translation whose pen power is sometimes better than the original, and it is also worthy of people's attention; Haggard's novels that stand the test of time should focus on his adventure novels, not "The "Funny Foreign History" is praised by Qian Zhongshu as a model of Lin translation whose pen power is sometimes better than the original work, and it is also worthy of people's attention; Haggard's novels that stand the test of time should focus on his adventure novels, not ""Funny Foreign History" is praised by Qian Zhongshu as a model of Lin translation whose pen power is sometimes better than the original work, and it is also worthy of people's attention; Haghard's novels that stand the test of time should focus on his adventure novels, not ""Funny Foreign History" is praised by Qian Zhongshu as a model of Lin translation whose pen power is sometimes better than the original work; Haggard's novels that stand the test of time should focus on his adventure novels, not ""Funny Foreign History" is praised by Qian Zhongshu as a model of Lin translation whose pen power is sometimes better than the original work; Haggard's novels that stand the test of time should focus on his adventure novels, not ""Funny Foreign History" is praised by Qian A biography of Gain". "Another example is Conan Doyle, what I am very dissatisfied with is that the domestic publishing industry has only been staring at his Sherlock Holmes series, ignoring his other talents, you must know that the complete works of Conan Doyle that are now published in Japan have reached the 30th and 40th volumes, so we feel that choosing his historical novel can better reflect the vision of Lin's translation novel."
He also specifically mentioned Tolstoy's short story collection "Luocha Cause and Effect", "It is very interesting that Lin Shu only began to cooperate with Chen Jialin to translate Tolstoy's novels from English translations after 1914, and a total of ten long or short and medium story collections were produced. The Records of Cause and Effect of the Rakshasa is one of the earliest collections of short stories, and the original does not seem to be particularly famous, and what is worse is that it contains a "Solon Maxim" by mistake, which is not written by Tolstoy, but from "Autumn Lantern Talks". But after all, this is the earliest collection of Lin translated Tolstoy's novels, from which we may be able to feel more about how Lin Shu began to recognize the depth and uniqueness of Russian literature after getting used to the world of British and French gentlemen. Therefore, it is still very meaningful to select this collection of novels. ”
Finally, the "New Selection" also added a long preface written by Zhang Zhi, plus an annotation of more than 40,000 words, which was printed separately into a small booklet. "I hope that on the basis of the views and conclusions of Qian Zhongshu and Ma Tailai, I can summarize the current research status of Lin's translated novels, and at the same time give a comprehensive assessment of the value of Lin's translated novels." I dare not 'sell myself and boast', but I always feel that even if it seems that the compilation and selection work with low academic content, whether there is a basic research vision and academic stance behind it is still very important. ”
The set of books is accompanied by a notebook of the Republic of China, and the cover is from the Commercial Press's 1916 edition of "Autumn Lantern Tan Dan"
Feel the charm of words in the texts that translate foreign novels
Careful readers will find that "Cervantes" was translated as "Sivantis" at that time, and Gulliver's Travels was translated as "Overseas XuanquLulu"... These differences in translations are explained in the Prologue, which is separately written.
"The replica pursues the reproduction of the original, and naturally maintains an independent historical form and style. The vast majority of Chinese readers today should already have a high level of screening ability, and will not make mistakes similar to 'Durkheim', 'Durkheim', and 'Dürheim' as different people. Qian Zhongshu once said that a good translation should make the reader want to know the original work further, rather than staying here. And Lin's translated novels are like this in his eyes. If this is true, we don't have to worry about not knowing that Sivantis is Cervantes, and the title of the Overseas Canal Record is Gulliver's Travels. Zhang Zhi said.
In his opinion, the readers of the "new selection" can be divided into three parts: "The first is the professional readers, who demand academic use and value, and the high-fidelity photocopy is the most suitable." The second part is literature lovers in the general sense, most of whom are familiar with and love the masterpieces translated by Lin Shu, and must be happy to find a kind and novel reading feeling from the best translations of foreign literature in the late Qing Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty. But I think there should also be readers of the third part, who should be people of different ages who are eager to learn a little knowledge and ability of literature. In the traditional Classics of Sinology, there are emperors and generals, talents and beautiful people, and what is missing is the overseas adventures, exotic scenery and the atmosphere of life in modern Western society in the 'Lin Translation Novel'. As the tongcheng ancient literary temple army, Lin Shu used to translate foreign novels, which is different from the traditional sense of 'ancient text', but there are many new expressions that he has transformed into flexible and vivid. ”
Attached is a catalogue of "Selected Ten Kinds of Novels translated by Lin" and reference to the original version:
1. [French] Dumas: La Dame aux Camélias (La Dame aux Camélias) (Business 1923 edition)
2. [English] Haggard: She, a History of Adventure (2 volumes, Business 1915 edition)
3. [English] But Si Di Geng si (Dickens): A History of The Funny Outsider (Nicholas Nickleby) (6 volumes, Business 1915 edition)
Washington Owen: The Alhambra: The Historical Stories (Alhambra) (Business 1914 edition)
5. [English] Swift: Gulliver's Travels (first half of Gulliver's Travels) (Business 1914 edition)
6. [Law] Pre-Hook (Hugo): Quatre-vingt-treize (1921 Edition) (Business 1921 Edition)
7. [West] Sivantis (Cervantes): Don Quijote (Don Quijote, Synopsis of the Story) (2 volumes, first edition of Commerce, 1922)
8. [Russian] Tolstoy: The Cause and Effect of the Roscha (Tolstoy's Short Stories) (Business 1915 Edition)
9. Scott: Ivanhoe (Ivanhoe) (2 volumes, Business 1914 edition)
10. [English] Conan Dalí (Conan Doyle): The White Company (The White Column) (2 volumes, Business 1915 edition)