In September 1987, the fifth work of Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami, "Norwegian Forest", was published by Kodansha, and it has been 30 spring and autumn seasons. Seventeen years after its publication, in 2004, 8.26 million copies were printed, and by 2009 it had exceeded 10 million copies, setting a record for the printing of a single line of Japanese novels.
In 1989, Lin Shaohua translated Norwegian Forest into Chinese and published it by Lijiang Publishing House, officially beginning the decades of binding with Haruki Murakami.
On December 10, Lin Shaohua talked about his initial translation experience in an interview with the surging news (www.thepaper.cn). He said that his understanding of Murakami at first was a blank slate.
Lin Shaohua in an interview
"When translated in 1989, the message was relatively closed. At that time, the Jilin People's Publishing House Changchun had a system, and a quarterly magazine "Japanese Literature" published a special issue of Murakami, with two or three short stories. I didn't pay much attention at the time. So when I translated Norwegian Forest, my understanding of Murakami was almost blank. ”
"Scholars like that"
At the sharing meeting on the 30th anniversary of the publication of "I and Haruki Murakami" - "Norwegian Forest" held in Shanghai on the same day, Lin Shaohua also told the story of his original translation of "Norwegian Forest".
A month after the publication of Norwegian Forest, in October 1987, Lin Shaohua had just begun studying abroad at Osaka City University in Japan. At that time, he was "a scholar with a mind to be like that." At that time, his ambition was: "Write two or three academic monographs, hit the table, and scare the colleagues around him half to death." ”
First edition of The Norwegian Forest, book cover: "Infinite Loss and Regeneration." The most intense 100% romance novel today. ”
"At that time, every time I went to the bookstore, I saw 'one red, one green', the first volume was bright red, and the next book was thief green, so the upper and lower volumes of 'Norwegian Forest' each carried a golden waist seal, stacked in the most conspicuous position at the entrance. Almost no one didn't look at it at the time. The only person who didn't read it was probably me, who would later become the translator of the book. Lin Shaohua joked.
In the interview, Lin Shaohua told reporters that although he studied Japanese literature in undergraduate and graduate school, he actually preferred to study Japanese classical literature. At that time, he "did not decide to engage in modern and contemporary literature."
He explained: "In the words of this wooden heart, Japanese culture is just a ruin of Tang Dynasty culture, and I don't see it in my bones, so I didn't do it at the beginning." ”
In December 1989, two months after Lin Shaohua returned to China, the annual meeting of the Japanese Literature Research Association was held in Guangzhou. Mr. Li Dechun, who died in September this year, pulled Lin Shaohua to a small editor of Lijiang Publishing House and strongly recommended "Norwegian Forest". Tell him how "wonderful" the market outlook will be if translated.
"After contacting 'Norwegian Forest', I felt that 'there are still such interesting novels in Japan'. It's on my mind. In this way, Lin Shaohua began to run with Haruki Murakami for twenty years.
"Blind Spots" and "Missing Doors"
"As far as the translation environment at that time was concerned, it was somewhat similar to the low-end hotel on the outskirts of Rome where Haruki Murakami wrote 'Norwegian Forest'," Lin Shaohua recalled, "just the music I played, one was not 'Norwegian Forest', and the other was not when Haruki Murakami was writing 'Norwegian Forest' - the 'Lonely Heart Club Band of Sergeant Pebb' that played one hundred and twenty times." The music I played was the Chinese guqin song "Mountain Flowing Water", "Fishing Boat Singing Evening", and "Pingsha Falling Goose". ”
The Beatles, Norwegian Forest
The reporter asked About Lin Shaohua's understanding of the music in "Norwegian Forest". He said: "Jazz I don't understand at all. While Haruki Murakami was drinking coffee and shaking his head to listen to jazz, I was still singing "Dongfang Hong" in a loud voice in the countryside. It's all music, but the difference is too great. ”
Lin Shaohua said that rock music, jazz, and even Western classical music are the "dead ends" and "missing doors" of his knowledge structure, but Haruki Murakami just likes to "show" his musical knowledge. However, at the time of his translation of "Norwegian Forest", the Internet was not developed and it was not easy to retrieve, which also made Lin Shaohua very distressed.
Worse is Murakami's treatment of jazz-rock terminology. Band names, singer names, song names, if you translate these into English into Japanese, it is not a problem. Directly in English is not a problem. He uses a transliteration of English, expressed under the Japanese katakana. ”
Lin Shaohua also wants to "plug" the "missing door" of jazz in the past. "I bought a jazz album from Murakami's novel to listen to, and it turned out to be completely noisy to me. Even if someone tells you how to appreciate it, there is no way. In terms of understanding, you can't deepen it. Music is not something that is understood with the head, but something that is experienced with the heart. Music cannot be an intellectual understanding, but an inner feeling, with which the soul is integrated. No matter how others tell you, you can't reach this level. ”
He told reporters that he later went to consult a friend who knew music and asked why he couldn't understand the jazz. This friend advised him: "Teacher Lin, music is such a thing, what age is it, what kind of music to listen to." You're all this old, listening to jazz, it's definitely just noise. You can't make up for this lesson. If you don't understand, you just have to ask me for advice. ”
The music in Haruki Murakami's book has also become the "most difficult and most distressing" thing in Lin Shaohua's translation process. "At this point, I am also very angry with Haruki Murakami, even angry. Sometimes, I hit the book on the floor and think about it and pick it up again. ”
"Red Rose" and "White Rose"
Regarding the character of the novel "Norwegian Forest", Haruki Murakami repeatedly said: "Although the advertising words on the original waist cover are written as '100% love novels', it is not a love novel, nor is it a youth novel. If you have to define it as a coming-of-age novel, it is probably closer. ”
In the novel, "Watanabe" grows from a teenager to a youth, and then when he lands on a plane, Watanabe is 37 years old when he is recalled by the Beatles' "Norwegian Forest". If he had come today, he would have been over sixty years old. He once told Naoko that he would wait for Naoko to heal from his illness and wait until the two of them could live together.
2010 film Norwegian Forest, Naoko
During the interview, the reporter asked Lin Shaohua if Watanabe really lived to this day, would he really wait for Naoko. He thought it was possible. He replied, "Watanabe is different from Nagasawa, he values the spiritual and spiritual fit between men and women. He is also a very responsible person and will take responsibility for Naoko. So from this point of view, it is entirely possible. Before Naoko was fully healed, Watanabe had said that he would wait for Naoko to get better and continue to be together. Before that, Watanabe was also willing to try to be with Naoko and take care of Naoko. ”
At the sharing meeting, Lin Shaohua also told an interesting story. Three years ago, he did a micro-survey through Weibo: "As the ideal marriage partner, who will you choose in Norwegian Forest?" Among the options, men have Watanabe, Kizuki, Nagasawa and death squads to choose from, and women have Naoko, Midoriko, Reiko and so on. Among the 148 people who commented on the post, 70 chose Midoriko, 11 chose Hatsumi, 8 chose Naoko, 6 chose Reiko, 12 chose Nagasawa, 8 chose Watanabe, 4 chose Kizuki, and 3 chose the death squad.
2010 film Norwegian Forest, Midoriko
Obviously, Midoriko is far ahead. Lin Shaohua said, "As a translator or as a man, I am not surprised by this." "The reasons for liking Midoriko are much richer and more interesting. Frank and natural, passionate, and full of life, it is like a deer jumping into the world in the morning light of spring. The point is that Midoriko is still very beautiful, and she has all the optimistic, curious, and mischievous vitality of a young girl. "Pick the greener, so warm girl."
To Lin Shaohua's surprise, Nagasawa actually got more tickets than Watanabe. "To know that Yongze is a person with personality and moral stains, then what is there to like about him?" To sum up: one is his attitude toward his career; the other is that he lives clearly; and the third is because of his famous saying--don't sympathize with yourself, sympathize with the work of a despicable coward. Some people even say that they have used this sentence to encourage themselves to get through the difficult stages of life. ”
The reporter also threw the question back to Lin Shaohua. The reporter asked if it was up to him to choose, would he choose Naoko, Midoriko, or Reiko. Lin Shaohua quoted a metaphor by Zhang Ailing: "Zhang Ailing has a saying that a man has two women in his life, one is a warm red rose and the other is a holy white rose. Using this metaphor, I think naoko might be a holy white rose, and a green child is a warm red rose. He paused and continued, "So, whether you prefer white roses or red roses, for sure." I want both roses. ”
"Lin Family Shop" taste
Lin Shaohua likes to call his translation "Lin JiaPuzi". In his opinion, it is inevitable that translators will leave their own style in the work. The faithfulness of translation can not only stay in the one-to-one correspondence of Chinese and foreign texts themselves, but should further convey the concept, meaning and atmosphere.
"Translation is the work of listening to and stealing information from other people's souls. I tend to think that the difference between ordinary translation and non-ordinary translation and good translation is that the former describes the story in the skin, and the latter steals the soul information and is moved by the aesthetic of the information reconstruction. ”
Lin Shaohua translated 42 of his works in his "Twenty Years Long Run" with Haruki Murakami, including the upcoming new book "Killing the Knight Commander". In Lin Shaohua's own words: "I have played with him for more than 20 years and translated more than forty books." Then even a fool should have realized a little bit of a doorway. I was all too familiar with his words. To put it a little more sauvignon, I read the first half of the sentence and knew what he was going to say in the second half. ”
Kill the Knight Commander
The speed at which Lin Shaohua translated Haruki Murakami's works was also quite amazing. "Killing the Knight Commander" is more than 500,000 words, and it took him only 85 days to complete the translation. "I was pressing the manuscript paper, holding the fountain pen, and pulling out the grid. Under the severe urging of Wu Hong, deputy editor-in-chief of Shanghai Translation Publishing House, 12 gold medals, he translated for 85 days in the countryside and pulled out 500,000 words. In the end, the head was not tired, and the fingers were tired. Wu Hong asked the editor to send me Chinese medicine, which was specially used to treat my fingers, and I refused. ”
"At that time, when my handwriting hurt, I went to the yard to pull weeds and the wild grass in the vegetable field. Needless to say, because the fingers are used differently, the pain of pulling the grass for a while is greatly reduced, and then come back to write for a while, and then pull out for a while after writing for a while. Lin Shaohua quipped: "Fortunately, I am in the countryside, if I am in the city of Qingdao, pulling the lawn will become Professor Lin destroying the greenery." That's trouble. ”
Some readers ridiculed the faithfulness of Lin Shaohua's translation to the original Japanese version, saying that people who like to Chinese translation may not really like "Haruki Murakami", they may like "Lin Shaohua + Haruki Murakami". This claim is not unfounded. However, the reporter is more worried about whether Lin Shaohua's familiarity with Haruki Murakami will have an impact on his translation of other authors.
"Then I found that some people wondered if The Natsume Soseki translated by Sensei Hayashi, Ryunosuke Wasagawa, Yukio Mishima, and Junichi Watanabe all had a Murakami flavor? I won't say it myself, you guys go and see it. The Natsume Soseki I translated is definitely Natsume Soseki, and Junichi Watanabe is Junichi Watanabe, each with obvious differences. At the same time, each of them has a 'Lin Family Shop' flavor. ”