Cheng Fangwu and the Communist Manifesto

The name Chengfangwu was heard about soon after the founding of New China. I may have noticed the name because he studied in Japan in his early years, graduated from Okayama No. 6 High School like Kuo Moruo, and then studied at the Faculty of Engineering at Tokyo Imperial University. Another reason is probably that in the 1920s, he organized a creation club with Guo Moruo, Yu Dafu and others. I am more interested in this piece of history. I always wanted to have the opportunity to meet him.

At one point in the 1950s, I was temporarily seconded to the Chinese Committee for the Congress for the Defence of World Peace as a Japanese interpreter for a banquet. The host of the banquet was Comrade Cheng Fangwu. Because of my work relationship, I have seen Guo Moruo many times, and I imagined that I must be a gentleman and a well-behaved intellectual. To my surprise, he was taciturn and gave the impression of being simple and unsociable.

Unexpectedly, after 30 years, when preparing for the establishment of the China Translators Association, I had the opportunity to meet Elder Cheng again and listen to his story about the translation of the Communist Manifesto.

It was 1982, and the China Translation Association, which was led by the China Foreign Language Bureau, had its eyebrows, and the list of members of the leading body was basically fixed, but the honorary president had yet to be determined. Wu Wentao, then director of the Bureau of Foreign Languages, and Jiang Chunfang, director of the Compilation Bureau of The Works of Ma Enles, decided after consultation to invite Comrade Cheng Fangwu out. In June, Director Wu Wentao asked me to contact Comrade Chen Guang, the secretary of the elderly and working at Chinese Min University.

On the morning of June 19, 1982, we arrived at the old man's home. On that day, the clouds were thicker, and although it was early summer, the temperature was lower. The old man in front of me, dressed plainly, put a thin sweater over his shirt, a pair of gray pants underneath, and a pair of sandals on his feet. The furnishings of the study are very simple, with colorful photographs of Chairman Mao sitting on a chair hanging on the wall, and goldfish tanks by the window, bringing vitality and vitality to this small study. Inside the house there is a cabinet for the Twenty-Four Histories and two other bookcases. In addition to the coffee table, sofas and chairs, the largest area is the desk placed in the center of the study.

Because Elder Cheng was the head of the Northern Shaanxi Public School when he was in Yan'an, and Comrade Wu Wentao had studied there, Comrade Wentao called Comrade Fangwu "Principal". Comrade Wen Tao said that Elder Cheng had translated the "Communist Manifesto," which was the most basic document, and everyone unanimously elected Elder Cheng as honorary president of the Translation Association.

Speaking of the early translations of the Communist Manifesto, as far as I know, the earliest introduction of the Communist Manifesto in Chinese was in January 1906, when the second issue of the monthly magazine Minbao published by the League association in Tokyo, Japan, published the ten programs of the Communist Manifesto compiled by Zhu Zhixin. Two years later, in 1908, the First Chapter of the Communist Manifesto, translated by Minming, was published in the Japanese newspaper Tianyi Bao. The Weekly Review, published on 6 April 1919, also selected and translated some passages of the Communist Manifesto. As a Chinese full translation was published in August 1920 by Chen Wangdao and signed by Chen Fotu. This version is based on the Japanese version, with reference to the English version. Japanese texts were provided by Dai Jitao, and English books were borrowed by Chen Duxiu from the Peking University Library. There are several early translations of the Communist Manifesto, such as the Communist Manifesto, which was co-translated by Cheng Fangwu and Xu Bing published by the China Bookstore in 1938, and the Bogu translation published by the Xinhua Bookstore in Yan'an in 1943.

"The Communist Manifesto translated by Chen Wangdao was translated from Japanese." "The first time I translated the Communist Manifesto was in German, in 1929, when Cai hesen asked me to translate it in Moscow. After I finished translating, I took the trustees to Moscow, but because Cai Hesen had been transferred back to China as the secretary of the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee, he could not find it, and the translation was also sunk in the sea. ”

The second translation was in 1938 in Yan'an with Xu Bing. This translation, based on the German text, is better. At that time, there was no German dictionary in Yan'an, and it was based on the words memorized by the brain to translate. If you can find a dictionary, it's a treasure. Elder Cheng said, "At that time, the publishing house gave me 5 yuan for the manuscript, and also gave Xu Bing 5 yuan. Xu Bing likes to drink, and we used the money to eat two meals at the institutional cooperative. ”

Elder Cheng went on to say that at that time, the Marxist-Leninist class of Shaanxi Northern Public School used this "Communist Manifesto" as a teaching material. Later, Bogu published a "proofreading" in Russian, correcting some shortcomings, but farther away from the original German. Just as Comrade Li Kuiliu said in his article "Memories of Comrade Cheng Fangwu's Translation": "The advent of this translation, on the front of spreading Marxism at that time, can be said to be a brilliant and dazzling lightning bolt, which caused a thunderous response."

As far as I know, when Elder Cheng returned to Yan'an from the Jin-Cha-Ji Border Region in 1945 to attend the Seventh National Congress of the Communist Party of China, he took the time to make a major revision of the translation of the Communist Manifesto and handed it over to the Liberation Society. However, soon the Kuomintang army attacked Yan'an, and the whereabouts of the translation were unknown. In 1952, during his time at Chinese University, he slightly corrected the translation of the Yan'an edition, and printed a small number of copies for use in Chinese Min University and Northeast Normal University. He did this work to commemorate the 105th anniversary of the publication of the Communist Manifesto and the 135th anniversary of Marx's birth.

"The third time I translated the Communist Manifesto was in 1975, when I already had a dictionary." The old man said to us funny.

According to Elder Cheng, this time he wrote a report to Chairman Mao and requested that the work of proofreading and translating the original works of Marxism and Leninism be done. Chairman Mao quickly approved it, saying that it was good to translate Marxist-Leninist works. Therefore, Elder Cheng and 8 comrades transferred from Shandong University did the proofreading work together and opened an office next door. Every morning, we meet and change the original work sentence by sentence. "I have translated the Communist Manifesto three times, and this version is the most accurate." Comrade Wentao also said that this is the most important version.

Finally, Comrade Wentao briefly reported on the preparations for the Translation Association, handed over the approval documents of the Central Propaganda Department to Elder Cheng, and asked Elder Cheng to serve as the honorary president of the China Translation Association. Attached to the approval is the proposed list of directors and leadership of the Translation Association.

Elder Cheng said, "There are many people!" There are also quite a few elderly people. The more help the sooner done. Sometimes, bad things can also be done. Now, some of the translations in the literary world are shoddy. ”

Comrade Wentao said: "If you have a banner, it is a call to the younger generations."

"I'm an old horse."

"The old horse knows the way."

Coming out of Cheng's hometown, Comrade Chen Guang said: "Comrade Zhu De read the Communist Manifesto, which was finally translated by Cheng Lao, said that the translation was good and the text was easy to read, and hoped that this work would continue in the future. At that time, the place where Comrade Zhu De and Elder Cheng met was the same room where we had just talked. That was the last time Comrade Zhu De saw an old man. ”