Reporter 丨He An'an
How many languages has "Dream of the Red Chamber" been translated into? Which foreign language has more translations of "Dream of the Red Chamber", and which translators are most fond of this Chinese masterpiece? How did "Dream of the Red Chamber" go to the Western world such as Britain, France and Germany? What are the differences between the various translations of "Dream of the Red Chamber"?
On April 11, Li Jing, deputy research librarian of the National Library of China and executive director of the Dream of the Red Chamber Society of China, gave a public lecture on 166 literature in Chaonei, with the title of "How Foreigners Read "Dream of the Red Chamber"", telling the story of the overseas translation of "Dream of the Red Chamber", one of the four famous works of Chinese tradition.
Dream of the Red Chamber has been translated into more than thirty languages
How many languages has "Dream of the Red Chamber" been translated into? Li Jing's answer is: So far, there are more than twenty foreign languages for translating "Dream of the Red Chamber", and if you add the languages of ethnic minorities in China, it is more than thirty kinds. In 1990, Feng Qiyong and Li Xifan edited the Dictionary of the Dream of the Red Chamber, and today's translation and introduction research is largely based on the translation research in this book, of which hu Wenbin, who was responsible for the translation and introduction research part of the year, was presided over.
Li Jing said: In the translation of Dream of the Red Chamber, there are eight minority languages in Our country, namely Manchu, Tibetan, Xibo, Mongolian, Uyghur, Kazakh, Yi, and Korean. Among them, Korean is the most special. Are Korean and Korean a language or two? She took a more eclectic approach to this, that is, when calculating the translations of ethnic minorities in China, she counted the Korean language as one. When calculating the spread of "Dream of the Red Chamber" in the eastern world, the korean and Korean dynasties are counted as the same language for statistics. In addition to Korean, there are seven translations in Asian languages, mostly in Japanese, as well as Vietnamese, Thai, Burmese, Arabic and Malay.
In European languages, the Russian version of Dream of the Red Chamber was the first full translation to appear in the Western world. In addition, Dream of the Red Chamber has been translated into Romanian, Hungarian, Greek, Czech, Slovak, Italian, Dutch, German, Spanish, Bulgarian, Swedish, French and English. Books that can now be counted and seen are Russian, Czech, Slovak, German, Spanish, French and English. Among them, there are three kinds of full translations in English, and there are two kinds of books published, that is, the "Huo translation" that everyone knows more about, and the "Yang translation" jointly translated by Chinese translator Yang Xianyi and British wife Dai Naidi. Of course, Esperanto, which is not a natural formation, also has an excerpted translation of "Dream of the Red Chamber".
Ito's complete Japanese translation of Dream of the Red Chamber (three volumes).
Which language has the most translations? Li Jing said that the full translation of Korean and Japanese is almost the most. The full translation translated by Lee Jong-tae and others is the earlier Korean-Korean translation, the others are the Lee Zhou Hong-jeon translation, the Hong Sang-hoon full translation, and the more recent version is the current Korean Dream Society President Choi Rong-cheol and his collaborator Ko Min-hee, as well as our domestic three Korean translations, these seven are full translations. There are four full Translations of Japanese: Shigeo Matsueda, Sohei Ito, Rō Iizuka, and Rinichi Izumi.
The earliest full foreign translation of Dream of the Red Chamber is in Korean
What is the world's earliest full foreign translation of "Dream of the Red Chamber", and in what year did it appear? Li Jing's answer was that the world's earliest full foreign translation of "Dream of the Red Chamber" was a han dynasty comparison text, and the one hundred and twenty translations of the Korean Leshan Jae-zang. This translation was completed around 1884, around the twenty-first year of Gojong in Joseon. The translators are Lee Jong-tae, a North Korean translator, and others. The original book was 120 volumes, and there are about 117 line-bound volumes in existence. In other words, the korean translation predates the emergence of the full translation of Western languages more than seventy years ago. The Russian edition of Dream of the Red Chamber, published in Moscow in 1958, was the earliest full translation of the Western language, translated by Panashik.
Li Jing especially shared the Iwanami Bunko, a well-known series in Japan, in which the title of the Japanese version of "Dream of the Red Chamber" directly uses the Chinese character "Dream of the Red Chamber", and the translator is Shigeo Matsueda. This edition consists of 14 volumes, and from 1940 to 1952, it took 12 years to publish it by Iwanami Shoten in Tokyo. Later, it was repeatedly revised and published, and the edition was more complicated. According to her statistics, the edition lasted 13 years from 1972 to 1985, which was finally revised and published by Shigeo Matsueda. This also means that Matsueda spent nearly fifty years translating Dream of the Red Chamber.
Matsueda's complete Japanese translation of Dream of the Red Chamber (14 volumes).
But Matsueda Shigeo is not the hardest worker, the most time-consuming translator, more diligent than him, more revisions, deeper investment translator is the Japanese translator Ito Sohei. His translation was first published by the Tokyo Ordinary Society, and is a letter-cover edition divided into three volumes. This version is one of the "Complete Works of Classical Chinese Literature" of the Ordinary Society, in addition to "Dream of the Red Chamber", the "Complete Works" also include "Wonders of Modern And Ancient Times", "Liaozhai Zhiyi", "Interpretation of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms", "Under the Wonders of Ancient Times", "History" and "Three Words and Two Beats".
Why is Ito Sohei the most revised and deeply devoted translator? According to Li Jing, his translation was first published in the Tokyo Ordinary Society from 1958 to 1960. From 1969 to 1970, a decade later, he came up with a full revision. In 1973, he revised it again on the basis of the 1969 edition. From 1996 to 1997, Ito, who had entered his later years, was again revised and retranslated on a large scale. In other words, Ito Shuhei revised and retranslated about five times before and after. In 2014, the People's Literature Publishing House published the "Greater China Library", in which the Chinese-Japanese version of "Dream of the Red Chamber" was selected as a translation of Ito Shuhei.
What is the difference between translating Dream of the Red Chamber and translating other classical masterpieces? Li Jing believes that the translators who translate "Dream of the Red Chamber" have basically only focused on this set of books in their lives, and it can be said that they have not done anything else since they fell in love with the translation of "Dream of the Red Chamber", and in the words of the Internet now, it can be said that they are "to death". Every translator revises his translation until his later years.
The 120-fold translation of The New Translation of Dream of the Red Chamber, a seven-volume translation of The New Translation of The Dream of the Red Chamber, is also the latest full Translation in Japanese, published by Iwanami Shoten from 2013 to 2014. In February 2015, this edition won the 66th Yomiuri Literature Prize research and translation prize in Japan, which is a very important award in Japan. In addition, among Japanese translators, Iizuka has both adapted and fully translated "Dream of the Red Chamber", which is a unique phenomenon in the translation of "Dream of the Red Chamber" in Japanese.
Morrison was the first person to translate "Dream of the Red Chamber" into English
The late 1970s and early 1980s were important historical years for the translation of Dream of the Red Chamber. At that time, the famous French sinologist Lei Wei'an made statistics: in 1978, the first and second volumes of the English translation of "Dream of the Red Chamber" translated by Yang Xianyi and Dai Naidi were published, and in 1980, the third volume was published; in 1973, the first volume of the English translation translated by Hox and Minford was published, and the second volume was probably published around 1977, around 1980, the third volume was published; in 1981, the full French translation was published. The publication of these three translations, two full English translations and one French translation, is a particularly important historical event in the history of the translation of "Dream of the Red Chamber" and even in the history of Chinese and foreign literary exchanges.
Yang Xianyi and Dai Naidi jointly translated Dream of the Red Chamber (hardcover three volumes).
Li Jing stressed that when referring to the English translation, people like to say "Yang Xianyi translation" and when referring to the French translation, they like to say "Li Zhihua translation", but in fact, such a statement is not rigorous, because both versions have collaborators, namely Yang Xianyi and his wife Dai Naidi, and Li Zhihua and his wife Ya ge
（Jacqueline Alézaïs）
They're real collaborators and don't just help tinker.
Li Zhihua and Ya Ge co-translated the French version of "Dream of the Red Chamber" letter set.
When the French edition of "Dream of the Red Chamber" was published, the French weekly "Express" at that time commented: "The full translation of the most gorgeous and moving masterpiece of Chinese classical masterpieces is undoubtedly a major event in the French literary circle in 1981." "The publication of a complete translation of this work now fills a two-century-long sad void, so that one feels as if Cervantes and Shakespeare have suddenly been discovered." Li Jing added that for French readers, Cervantes and Shakespeare are both giants of foreign literature, and they compare Cao Xueqin with Cervantes and Shakespeare, from which we can also see the status of "Dream of the Red Chamber" and Cao Xueqin in the hearts of French readers and researchers at that time.
Here Li Jing said that if the full translation is not considered, the earliest English translation actually began earlier than the Japanese-Korean translation that can be found now, and this time can be advanced to 1812. At that time, "Dream of the Red Chamber" first appeared in public publications in the Chinese textbook "dialogue and single sentence of Chinese"
（Dialogues and Detached Sentences in the Chinese Language）
It was this textbook that turned some foreigners who needed to work in China at that time into the first batch of translators and translators. The author of this Chinese textbook was an early British sinologist, translator, and missionary Morrison
（Robert Morrison）
。
In the 1816 edition of Chinese Dialogue and Single Sentences, it can be seen that the content of the selected translation is the two dialogues between Baoyu and The Raider in the Thirty-first Episode of the Dream of the Red Chamber. Morrison went to Guangzhou in 1807 and lived in China for 16 years. In 1823, he returned to England with a large number of Chinese books, including different editions of Dream of the Red Chamber and some sequels, as well as some adaptations. Morrison himself was a translator, the first to translate the Bible into Chinese, and he compiled many Chinese and English dictionaries.
Li Jing said that Morrison was the first person to translate "Dream of the Red Chamber" into English. Although his compilation of Chinese Dialogues and Sentences was first published in 1816, translation began in 1812. At that time, he translated some fragments from the fourth "Hulu Monk Judgment Gourd Case" of "Dream of the Red Chamber" into English, although these translations were attached to the letters and were not published publicly, but new excavators have already discovered these documents. From this, it can be seen that from all the current information, the earliest English translation is better than the earliest Japanese translation
(Earliest in 1892)
It was about 80 years earlier, more than 70 years before the full Korean translation.
Considered the best Chinese novel: Chinese language textbooks for the English-speaking world
The abridged translation published in 1929 by Wang Jizhen, a professor at Columbia University and a scholar of Chinese descent, is also a relatively important edition. The title of this edition of the translation is Dream of the Red Chamber, which is by far the most popular translation of Dream of the Red Chamber that can be seen. In 1958, an updated version of Wang Jizhen's abridged version was introduced, which added the British sinologist Arthur Welley
（Arthur Waley）
Written preface. In the preface, he spoke highly of "Dream of the Red Chamber": "'Dream of the Red Chamber' may be the first realist novel in China, which is different from ordinary historical novels, but a microcosm of the entire feudal society, its content is rebellious, and it is an artistic reproduction of the author's life and experience." ”
Li Jing said that just as we have translated a large number of Works in English, Japanese, French and Spanish to understand European culture and Japanese culture, the translation of "Dream of the Red Chamber" is also the contribution of Chinese culture to world culture. Because the Language of Wang Jizhen is particularly vivid and fluent, it is widely circulated in the English world, and until now, many university teachers still use it as a Chinese textbook.
Wang Jizhen's English excerpt of Dream of the Red Chamber (1958 revised edition, Random House).
Sister McHugh of the United States
（Florence and Isabel McHugh）
Although this version is an English translation based on the German translator Kuhn's translation, it is not widely circulated, but it has a great influence on Hawkes's translation. Li Jing said, how did Hawkes first start translating "Dream of the Red Chamber"? According to the reminiscence article written by Minford, it is mentioned that an editor of the British Penguin Company first saw the translation of Sister McHugh, and after reading it, she felt that the story was too good, and to find a particularly good translator to re-translate, she found Hawkes of Oxford University and asked him to translate "Dream of the Red Chamber" into English, and it was a complete translation.
So, which base did Hawkes and his student Min Fude choose when they decided to translate Dream of the Red Chamber? The choice was Cheng Yiben of the 1964 edition of the People's Literature Publishing House. At the same time, in the process of translation, Hawkes also made a large number of references to the Yu schoolbook and a variety of fat manuscripts and Cheng Jiaben, and made up many of the contents deleted by Cheng Yiben. Minford highlights Hawkes's version work in the preface, saying: "Mr. Hawkes is both a creative translator and a rigorous versionist, and the new edition presents Hawkes's own reorganized book. ”
Penguin's English translation of Hawkes's Book of Stones (Volume II).
Li Jing introduced that the entry of the British encyclopedia "Dream of the Red Chamber" that can be seen at present is to introduce "Dream of the Red Chamber" as the best Chinese novel and the best novel in world literature, and said that the author of the novel is Cao Xueqin
(Using Cao Xueqin's original name Cao Xia)
Mentioning that the decline of the Jia family, a feudal family, is roughly described in "Dream of the Red Chamber", and more than 400 characters are written successively in the book, including more than 30 major characters and more than 300 relatively minor characters. It also mentions that the language of "Dream of the Red Chamber" is a particularly vivid literary language.
In the preface to the English translation published in 2010, Min Fude writes:
"The Book of Stones, also known as Dream of the Red Chamber, is one of the greatest traditional Chinese novels. During the Ming Dynasty, a variety of storytellers emerged, and Dream of the Red Chamber inherited the proud tradition of the vernacular novels they bred—such as the adventure hero stories "Water Margin" and "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", or "Journey to the West", which tells the story of the Monkey King's difficulties on the way to the scriptures, full of irony and fantasy imagination. One of the most important traditions comes from the late Ming Dynasty's custom and humane novel "Golden Plum Bottle". "Dream of the Red Chamber" is built on this rich storytelling tradition, but it also expands a whole new direction for this tradition. ”
Speaking about the literary status of Dream of the Red Chamber, Min Fude said: "This novel transcends any other traditional Chinese literary work and captures the essence of Chinese culture from ancient times to the present: what is Chinese, what is Chinese life, what is Chinese feeling." The writers and compilers of novels are flag bearers
(Strictly speaking, it is an 'outsider')
Ironically, this fact makes the chinese cultural landscape in the book even more striking. At the same time, he said, "This work has been read and read again, and many important figures in China's public life have been fascinated and even addicted to it... Since its publication, 'Dream of the Red Chamber' has occupied a central – and has always been controversial – space in Chinese cultural life." Reading "Dream of the Red Chamber" has almost become a national habit. These can be seen as the evaluation of "Dream of the Red Chamber" by the English academic community.
Some foreign commentators believe that "Baoyu is a woman"
Of course, not all foreign translators, translators, and researchers have such an objective evaluation of Dream of the Red Chamber. Li Jing is known as the German missionary Carl Guzlaf
(Karl Gutzlaff)
For example, the published criticism of "Dream of the Red Chamber", which was published in the 1842 Guangzhou-published "China Cong Bao" newspaper, came to a shocking conclusion, saying that "Baoyu is a woman" He confused Dai Yu with Bao Yu, and even misled Bao Yu's gender.
Guzlav did not have a high evaluation of the literary achievements of "Dream of the Red Chamber", considered the novel to be boring, and concluded that "this novel can be said to have no artistry in style, but is nothing more than the colloquial language of the upper class society in the northern provinces." ”
Guzlav was not the only evaluator, and Jolly, an early translator of Dream of the Red Chamber, wrote a particularly long paper by a colleague of the Macau Embassy, Zhai Lisi, who mentioned: "The characters who appear in the whole story, whether important or not, are no less than four hundred people, and the plot structure is no less complete than Fielding, and the meticulous depiction of many characters reminds people of the best achievements of the greatest novelists in the West." As a panorama of Chinese social life, "Dream of the Red Chamber" presents readers with almost all the characteristics they can imagine in turn, and is the most valuable work for foreign researchers; as for all people who have to use Chinese written language, it is true that there is a guilt before there is this newspaper, and they should all carefully read "Dream of the Red Chamber". ”
Jolly's English excerpt of The Dream of the Red Chamber Tuttle edition.
So, what exactly is "Sister Lin" in the English-speaking world? There has been some controversy in the academic community about the translation of the names of the characters in "Dream of the Red Chamber". In the 1929 edition of Wang Jizhen's translation of Dream of the Red Chamber, the name of Daiyu is translated into two kinds of transliterations, Daiyu and Tai-yu, and the transliteration is Black Jade
(black jade)
。 Li Jing said that some scholars have questioned this, but in the different translations and reference books we have seen so far, the translation of Daiyu's name has always been the transliteration Daiyu, or the early Tai-yu and the transliteration Black Jade are parallel.
Around 1980, the American sinologist Wei Feide
（Frederic Wakeman）
In the Mainstream American Cultural Media "New York Review of Books", a long article about "Dream of the Red Chamber" was published, "Genius of the Red Chamber", which was a translation of the first two volumes of the "Huo Translation". Wei Feide said in the article that Dai Yu was "a wayward, self-congratulatory, talented beauty."
Lin Daiyu is mentioned on the website of Rice University in the United States, commenting that she is "talented, beautiful, slender, not very healthy, suspicious, jealous, a feminine character, and Baoyu's 'girlfriend'". According to nYU's webpage, Lin Daiyu is "Jia Baoyu's closest cousin and the primary object of his affection." She was thin and sick, but her beauty was extraordinary... She was emotionally fragile and jealous, but she was a brilliant poet and musician. ”
Why musicians? Li Jing said that in the last forty times, there is a plot of Lin Sister Fuqin, and since she can play the guqin and understand the score, it is also reasonable to say that she is a musician.
From these examples, it can be seen that in the English vision, although lin daiyu's image is not as fascinating as in the Chinese world, it is also more objective, and it is basically consistent with the identity, personality, appearance and talent in the original work. The name Black Jade has become a well-established and universally accepted paraphrase for English readers. As for the official publication of books in the English-speaking world, the use of Black Jade as a transliteration of "Daiyu" is introduced together with the transliteration, which has been a common situation for many years.
Author 丨He An'an
Edited by 丨Rodong
Proofreading 丨 Chen Diyan