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At the end of September, the first "Annual Selection of Translations" final selection and award ceremony was held in Shanghai as scheduled. On the day of the event, Li Jingze, vice chairman of the China Writers Association, Lu Jiande, director of the lu xun literature award translation award jury, Sun Ganlu, vice chairman of the Shanghai Municipal Federation of Literature and Literature, Tan Jinghua, professor of Shanghai Overseas Chinese University, Zheng Tiwu, dean of the Institute of Literature of Shanghai Chinese University, Yuan Xiaoyi, dean of the School of Foreign Languages of East China Normal University, Tan Zheng, professor of Fudan University, Xiao Bai, a professional writer of the Shanghai Writers Association, Dan Hansong, professor of Nanjing University, and Chen Ying, professor of Sichuan University of Foreign Chinese, attended the final selection and discussion activities.
YiWenjun excerpted the wonderful speeches of the judging experts and shared them with the readers. Readers are welcome to leave a comment in the comments section to discuss.
Lee Kyung-taek
Vice Chairman of the Chinese Writers Association
How does translation shape Chinese sense of self?
Since modern times, translation has not only been used for us to learn, learn from, and refer to, but is itself a part of Chinese literature. When a work is translated, it has already participated in the construction of modern Chinese. This is true not only of our everyday Chinese, but also of our modern literary language, to a large extent, in which translations participate in the construction. Therefore, I have always thought that translators are also creating while translating, and they are creating in a Chinese sense.
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In the twenties and thirties, Mr. Lu Xun spent a lot of energy translating Polish literature and the literature of weak and small peoples. It is precisely because they believe that we have a similar fate to those of weak peoples that in translation we construct our own identity and our relationship with the world.
And it's still important for us now, in such a complex and changeable world (we call it "the greatest change in a hundred years"), there is indeed the question of how to confirm the relationship between Chinese and the world, the relationship between the self and others, which also involves "who we are". For a long time, our vision of world literature was from St. Petersburg to Paris, London to New York, but there must be something else in this world that we have overlooked. I think that in such a world, in the midst of unprecedented changes in a century, translation should rely on its more conscious sense of cultural subjectivity to respond to and adjust our Chinese self-awareness.
Lu Jiande
Director of the jury of the Lu Xun Literature Award Translation Award
What role did translation play in the emergence of modern Chinese literature?
In 20th-century China, translation work was very important. Since the end of the 19th century, there have been famous translators in Shanghai, and I think their translations are directly related to the occurrence of modern Chinese literature to some extent. Therefore, we look at the pioneers of modern Chinese literature, such as Mr. Lu Xun, who has translated many works, and special emphasis is placed on drawing nourishment from translation work, including the questions he raised, he hopes to bring new blood, new imagination, new syntax, and new metaphors to our traditional culture. These are very important.
In the hands of the founders of the Chinese novel industry of that generation, such as Mr. Lu Xun and Mr. Mao Dun, translation began to develop by leaps and bounds in China. This development, which we now look back on, is part of modern Chinese literature. Looking at Ba Jin again, he translated from different languages, although Ba Jin is said to be Chinese writer, but his foreign language is very good, and his collection of foreign literary works is extremely rich. I once saw an exhibition of manuscripts and books by Chinese writers at the National Library in Beijing, where one of the best early editions of Shakespeare was Ba Jin's private collection. These founders of modern Chinese literature are very passionate about foreign literature and hope to promote a new culture and a new literary tradition through the translation and introduction of foreign literature.
Sun Ganlu
Vice Chairman of Shanghai Municipal Federation of Literature and Literature
Times make "good translations"
Translations are subtle, complex, and human. For example, Teacher Zheng Tiwu, I have known him for many years. One winter, he had just returned from Moscow University, and we were at his house, and the meal was very simple, but we did not expect a blackout, it was very cold, and the lights could not be turned on, and finally the teacher lit a candle and read Blok's poem about the cavalry riding through the snow. These contents were fused with the Russian language read by the teacher and made me remember very clearly. In the blink of an eye, more than twenty years have passed.
I asked Mr. Wang Daoqian, why do you translate "Duras" as "Dura"? He made a very subtle statement, very interesting. It's not that he doesn't know or understand, it's not a mistranslation, he has his considerations.
There is also Mr. Chow Kexi, who once retranslated Madame Bovary. One day he called me and said, let's discuss whether to change the title of the book and translate it as "Madame Beauvalli." He felt that Beauwalli was phonetically closer to French.
Although I only know a little bit of fur, I said, "This certainly doesn't work from the reader's point of view, because this has already formed a general translation."
It's not a question of whether it's good or not, or what has been formed may be "good." At this time, if you modify it again, you may not be able to sell the book, and others will not know what kind of book it is. In the end, of course, he did not do so, but translated it into Madame Bovary.
Why did Mr. Wang Daoqian, Mr. Zhou Kexi, including Mr. Lin Shaohua just mentioned, become so popular in those days? Looking at the social and cultural environment in China at that time, do we imagine that if Haruki Murakami had not translated it like that, would there have been such a huge response? In a special era, there was a special translation that fit the social and spiritual life of the time, and it aroused a kind of repercussions among ordinary readers, especially young readers. This is the very subtle influence that translation exerts on the country of the target language.
Tan Jinghua
Professor at Shanghai Overseas Chinese University
Translation Agency and Translation Literature
Privately, I have always said that the Shanghai Translation Publishing House is our "old owner" in the field of foreign literature. In fact, in the early 1980s, when our short stories were not needed in other publishing houses, it was the Shanghai Translation Publishing House's "Foreign Literature and Art" that published our translations. So since then, we have been in constant communication with the Translation Press.
In general, in the 1980s, China published translated literature, one was the Humanities Society (People's Literature Publishing House) and the other was the Translation Society, which was a deep-rooted concept for us. Because the works and writers selected by the Shanghai Translation Publishing House are very good. We later checked that the translation agency at that time was assigned to Shanghai by the Humanities Agency, and later it became bigger and bigger, and the brand of the Shanghai Translation Publishing House became more and more popular.
It is not easy for us to stand up this sign. For publishing houses, it is necessary to consider the needs of readers, sales volumes, and works of various themes, while also ensuring the quality of publications, and I hope that over the years, the translation agency has done a good job of combining the two.
Zheng Tiwu
Dean of the Institute of Literature, Shanghai University of Foreign Chinese
Why are translation reviews absent?
When it comes to truly meticulous literary translation work, it is actually difficult to judge, especially for non-specialists. For example, some people think that as long as it is a four-word word, idioms are used a lot, look neat, or even "elegant", they think that this translation is very "good". This is a very vulgar understanding of "Sindaya", and it is no longer appropriate to measure translation work in this view.
But the absence of translation reviews is a big problem now. Many years ago, we said that translation criticism was indispensable, just as we said that literary creation is to flourish and literary criticism is indispensable. But our lack of literary translation is much worse than in the creative world. We have too few mature practitioners, not that no one can do this work, but may not have the energy to do it, or disdain to do it. So, one of the benefits of our hosting this event is that at least it brings people together, face-to-face and discusses, which will help us to promote translation reviews.
Yuan Xiaoyi
Dean of School of Foreign Languages, East China Normal University
Translation is also a classicization process
The influence of foreign literature on modern Chinese literature can only be determined after half a century; it is only after its influence is repeated that we are convinced. Therefore, this influence is subtle when it occurs, and it is only later when we write the history of literature that we realize that there was such a big impact. So today, those of us who do translations can still affirm our own value. Not simply to say how big your contribution is, but to say that you are also part of your contribution.
In fact, translation work is first and foremost a classicization process, a classicized force. At this point, the translation or translation of literature should be aware of such a mission, because it may have a certain guiding role. Now that there are so many works, what to translate so that these translations can reach a wider audience may really be the task of the organizers of the translations, such as publishing houses, foreign literary researchers and critics, so it is necessary to be careful about what and how to translate.
Talk about Zheng
Professor of Fudan University
Where is the threshold for translation and translation reviews?
The requirements for translators to engage in translation are very high, because on the one hand, the translator needs to learn the foreign language itself well, and on the other hand, the Chinese is also good. I myself have taught translation in Fudan for many years, including the fourth-grade translation class, and I have seen that even the best students in Fudan often make mistakes when they encounter some difficult sentences. So, how can a non-professional person encounter some difficult sentences and turn them correctly?
Of course, there are also various translation theories now, and people also say that there are many creations in translation work, even including rewriting, which can also give us many examples. But I personally still insist that if these creations and rewrites are completely out of the translator's intention, then why translate? Just go straight to recreate it.
Speaking of translation, on the one hand, we do lack professional translations now, and the overall level of translation work is uneven; on the other hand, we also lack professional judges, such as Zheng Tiwu just mentioned. Obviously, the "Foreign Literature and Art" magazine of the Shanghai Translation Publishing House holds a translation competition every year, and at this time, there will be a lot of debate on the Internet, and there will be a lot of discussion about how certain texts should be translated. This is of course a good thing, indicating that everyone pays more attention to translation. However, we found that the level of these discussions was generally not high. Now with the Internet, regardless of qualifications, everyone comes to participate in the discussion, and the unqualified people do not know it. It's ridiculous that these people, after a year or two of studying a foreign language, feel that their opinions are as effective as those who have used them for decades.
Little white
Professional writer of Shanghai Writers Association
Translation and writing of modern Chinese literature
Everyone should have a very clear feeling about the direct involvement of translation in the construction of our language. I think we can look at it this way, since Lu Xun's generation of writers wrote new vernacular literature, the development of Chinese literature has been very rapid, every 10 years, whether it is style, technology, language, or even length, it has gone up a very big step.
Today's artificial intelligence algorithms are also very advanced. Therefore, in fact, we can do such a job, that is, to compare a large number of texts of the same era, we should be able to clearly see from the language, narrative techniques, narrative methods, etc., how modern Chinese literature and modern vernacular literature have come step by step, and the relationship between them and translated literature. In the past, we didn't have this method, just by feeling, but now we actually have the ability to do this kind of work.
But Han Song
Professor, Nanjing University
Is the scoring mechanism for translated works reasonable?
Of course, translation can have a high or low level, but for now, as Li Jingze said before, writers are the most tolerant of translated works, while ordinary translators are the most intolerant of translated works. Because, there are a lot of translation quality "pickets" on social media such as Douban.
On the other hand, it is also strange that the translation's scoring is not a plus-point system but a subtraction system. The more correct the bonus system is, the higher the cumulative score, and the level of this translation should be good. But the current method of judging is the subtraction system, for example, in the first 10 pages, 20 pages found a mistake, the translator translated "New Balance" as "new balance", the translation is deducted 10 points, if there are 10 places, the work is 0 points. This is equivalent to a translation being corrected to a certain number of errors, and the place where the translator translates correctly will be covered up. In a way, that's not really fair.
Chen Ying
Professor of Sichuan University of Foreign Chinese
What kind of guidance is needed to translate literature?
The progress of translated literature is very fast. In the '90s, I would see terrible mistakes in some books, and one of the most "wonderful" mistakes was that there was a word in Italian that could have two meanings, one meaning "Czech" and the other meaning "blind", so there was a translation like "blind driver driving a car", which was a very terrible mistake.
But for these books that we are looking at now, we are not talking about these terrible mistakes, but the restoration of the original style. Well, I think translation has really made a lot of progress, but there are still many problems that need to be solved. In addition, I have been thinking about literary criticism.
In the early years, I saw a great literary critique in Southern Weekend about The Name of the Rose, which talked about the good and bad of the work, and it was very well written. We, as translators, also particularly expect something like this, so we need to find ways to promote such literary criticism. Now with regard to literary criticism, there are often some relatively big events in society, and we also need to have a dominant voice to do some promotion.
Finally, I would like to say that publishing is closely related to the cultural trends of the times. We can also think about who is reading books now, what kind of people are reading books, and what kind of works can bring them benefits. In addition, reading also needs to be guided, and the influence of writers is very large. Of course, the promotion of Italian works and the promotion of famous Chinese writers are also closely related.
After full discussion, the expert jury decided to award the first "Annual Selection of Translations" award to Mr. Yang Ziwu's translation of the "History of Modern Literary Criticism" (Revised Edition)
"History of Modern Literary Criticism" is a representative work of the famous American contemporary critic and comparative literature giant Reina Weilerk, with a total of eight volumes, comprehensively sorting out and summarizing the theory and practice of modern literary criticism in Europe and the United States, and has achieved the status of classics since its publication. The author is proficient in many languages, knowledgeable, and informative, and it is difficult to translate. Mr. Yang Ziwu Keshao Jiqiu spent more than 20 years to completely translate this magnificent masterpiece, which can be described as a famous mountain cause. His painstaking and lonely spirit and his learning through China and the West are impressive. This translation has a height comparable to that of the original work, and its influence is silent and long-lasting.
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