Difference between revisions of "2022 Interview by Lou Kang"
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| − | =Interview= | + | =Interview: Final Version CN EN (For English, please see beneath.)= |
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| + | =娄康2022年6月20日采访吴漠汀 （英文请见后面）= | ||
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| + | ==1. 在翻译一部本土化气息特别浓的小说前，是否会到当地进行走访呢？== | ||
| + | 虽然不可否认，仍然有不少优秀的翻译作品其译者没有机会走访书中所述之处，但我个人认为，实地走访文中场景是十分重要的，这样译者可以深深的沉浸在原作所处的社会和历史环境中。2014年9月21日我在西安与贾平凹见面，他给我展示了他家里的木制饕餮面具等具有地区特色的收藏品，并向我解释了这些收藏品的地域文化根源。我也从许多研究外国作家的中国同事的口中得知，他们走访过原文的发生地，也走访过原文作者们的墓地，以此获得更深层的感受。许多演员也都潜心研究和体验他们所饰历史人物的生活。 | ||
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| + | 从在北京大学读书时起，我就尽量花费较多的时间研究曹雪芹的生平。中国艺术研究院红楼梦研究所给了我很多帮助，他们送给了我《红楼梦大辞典》，我还走访了位于香山脚下的曹雪芹纪念馆，也曾到访过重建的北京大观园，除此之外，还参观过故宫，品尝了小说里提及的各种菜肴，我也在南京待过一段时间。 | ||
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| + | 我学到最多的是中国和国外的各种文学研究文献，以及参加中国的红学研讨会，同事们在会上分享最新的研究成果。我更多的读了关于康熙、雍正和乾隆时代的生活以及满族文化、八旗制度等。当然，我主要的任务是牵着读者的手，带他们穿越回250年前的中国，让那个时代的繁华生活重新变得鲜活。为了将这部小说带入当今世界，我还参与了一个项目，以D书的形式重现这部小说，这是一本袖珍书，在小说文本中加入歌曲和视频片段的二维码，在智能设备和谷歌眼镜上可见，是法兰克福书展上最成功的项目之一。通过这种方式，我们也可以赢得德国年轻读者来阅读这部中国经典作品。 | ||
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| + | 我在翻译绵绵的小说《熊猫》时也曾做过类似的工作。我在上海拜访了她，她带我看了小说中出现的所有地方。我在那里发现，这部小说实际上是对她生活的记录。同样，我在1992年12月2日见到了王蒙，后来又在德国和哈佛大学见过几次。2009年5月25日，我与韩寒通了电话，我读了他的博客和杂志，看了他拍摄的电影，翻译了他的三部小说，还在德国最重要的报纸上向德国读者介绍了韩寒的访谈。2009年9月12日，在莫言获得诺贝尔奖三年之前，我在法兰克福见到了他。我发表了对他的采访，并向德国读者更多地介绍了他。这些只是他获得诺奖的很小的一块镶嵌。我在北京见到了余华，印象深刻的是，这位伟大的作家对待他的译者没有任何架子，而是平等相待。 | ||
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| + | ==2. 能否拿《红楼梦》举例，在翻译中国古代作品的时候，如何尽可能的避免翻译里面带来的文化空白问题？== | ||
| + | 《红楼梦》在时间和空间上存在着差距。当贾宝玉称呼他的祖母时，他不叫她 "奶奶"，而是叫 "贾母"，他的父亲、母亲、表兄弟等也是如此，他们如外人那样直呼其名，而不是因亲戚关系按照不同地位而有不同称谓，如 "三爷 "等。这在250年前的中国很常见，而在250年前的欧洲也很常见。所以与其说是文化上的差距，不如说是时间上的差距。因此，如果译者决定遵循“交际翻译”策略，他可以把它直接变成 "奶奶、爸爸、妈妈 "，使文本更好地被理解（本地化）。如果重视原作的真实性和作者出版前的最后一个手稿版本，可以保留原来的间接称呼，使文本在今天的读者听起来更遥远和正式（外国化）。 | ||
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| + | 《红楼梦》中的语言比较间接，性生活多以 "云雨之欢 "来描述。闵福德解决了这个问题，他对两个场景的描述比原著中的描述更详细。 | ||
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| + | 即使是小说中描述的植物，在欧洲也不那么常见。在欧洲，即使在冬季也能保持针状绿叶的树木是 "常绿乔木、常青树"，其中 "松树 "是最常见的一种。在中国，最常看到的是 "东方红"（Platycladus Orientalis）。这两种树都属于 "conifer(常绿乔木、常青树、松树)"，最明显的区别是，欧洲的叶子很薄，几乎像针叶，而中国的叶子则较大。然而，当用 "Platycladus Orientalis "来翻译柏树时，欧洲读者总是会想到一个异国的环境。这种翻译策略被称为 "外国化"。在原文中，提到 "松树"主要是为了给人留下清代中国常见的常青树的印象。因此，将"柏"、"柏树"、"松柏树 "翻译成 "conifer(松树)"是完全可以的，这种策略称为 "本地化"。这确保了欧洲读者不会被误导，不会注意到不需要的细节，而是能够跟随故事的脉络发展。 | ||
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| + | 然而，小说中的执法者被称为“锦衣军”，他们没收贾家的财产，抓捕家庭成员，履行了西方今天的警察职能。然而，用 "警察 "来翻译“锦衣军”这样“本土化”的名词可能会使读者感到惊讶，因为这听起来很现代。因此，更加外国化，甚至异国情调的术语“gold jackets”可能会显得更加合适。在整个翻译过程中，会不断需要译者去做出选择，每个人都可能有不同的意见，什么选择是最合适的？没有人把译者从做出选择的负担中解放出来。重要的是，译者在他或她的一生中，不应一直坚持他最初的选择，译者应始终对同事、红学专家和读者的建议持开放态度。因此，以一种方式翻译一个词，在2000年可能是一个好的选择，而以不同的方式翻译，在2020年可能是一个更好的选择。这也取决于目标读者以及译者希望给他们留下什么印象。如果目标读者是红学家，就可以更多地坚持原文，少做解释（外国化），如果目标读者是大众，就可以更自由，让文本更接近读者（本地化）。 | ||
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| + | ==3. 在翻译中遇到的最麻烦的翻译问题会是哪一类？是由于什么方面的文化差异造成的呢？== | ||
| + | 就像爱斯基摩人，他们有许多专门的词来描述 "雪"一样，有些中文词在西方语言中有更多不同对应的词，因此，译者需要做出决定。例如一个比较困难的点是，"姑娘 "这个词，不仅可以是主人对晚辈的称呼，也可以是对仆人的称呼，甚至是仆人对女主人的称呼，比如林黛玉（如第82章）。所以它需要被翻译成 "主人"、"女儿"、"小姐"，这取决于谁用它来称呼谁。有时一个汉语词语在西方语言中表示不同的几种东西，所以作为译者，你们必须做出决定。最棘手的是中国读者的背景知识，特别是提到的汉字的偏旁部首，还有如同宇宙那样丰富的早期诗词的边边角角），这些都牵动中国读者的神经。当林黛玉引用《西厢记》中的诗句时，贾宝玉立即知道她爱上了他。这些微妙的东西需要在字里行间表达出来，而不是让西方读者先知道《西厢记》。 | ||
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| + | 这里有例子，在文本中做出进一步的解释或注释，会更有助于理解：在第92章中，宝玉提到了几个中国读者熟悉的历史女性人物，但西方人并不熟悉。"[...]班婕妤、蔡文姬、谢道韫诸人。" 这在德语中成为一个很长的翻译："[...]汉成帝饱读诗书的嫔妃班婕妤，以及博学多才的两位女性诗人蔡文姬和谢道韫。("die belesene Konkubine des Herrschers Tscheng-di von Han Ban Djie-yü and die zwei Dichterinnen Tsai Wën-dji und Hsie Dau-yün")。 | ||
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| + | 令人头疼的还有一些带有文化色彩的词汇，比如关于中国服装、中国菜肴和习俗的名称。其中一些专业术语即使对中国读者来说也不完全清楚。在这种情况下，译者需要给出更多的解释，以保持读者对故事的关注，而不是让他们分心，因为这些东西并不打算分散原文读者的注意力。另外，小说中多处提到了迷信（superstitious beliefs）。有时我们会有 "假友"，例如，当巫婆将针刺入布偶时，这是我们熟悉的女巫历史和巫毒崇拜。然而，我们不能简单地用熟悉的西方词语来形容它，因为这些文化上的相似之处有其当地的真正传统，可能是独立发展的，也可能是与某种文化交流形成。在任何情况下，重要的是要把差异说清楚，不要让读者把事情搞混。另外，第120章中的贾政认不出来他的儿子贾宝玉，而贾宝玉却以某种方式离开了尘世，这与西方读者熟悉的《圣经》中的故事是类似的。然而，即使是这些相似的故事，在当地的传统和背景下也能获得适当的翻译，以提高对文化传统的认知。 | ||
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| + | 有一次，北静王的衣服被称为穿着“江牙海水五爪龙”图案。如果没有解释，西方读者可能不知道这种说法是对海水江崖纹的俗称，即在混乱的江水上显示五爪龙，而这种图案是为皇帝或皇室保留的。因此，提到他衣服上的这一图案细节，支持了北静王的崇高地位和权威。书中描述了很多衣服，其中很多都混合了满族和汉族文化，甚至还可以找到西方的来源和影响。小说中描述的许多文化现象或产品并不是纯汉文化的，也不是纯满族文化的，而是通过混合和融合呈现在小说里。曹雪芹玩转不同的文化，甚至减少小说设定在清朝的暗示。这不仅是创造具有永恒价值的小说的一种方式，而且显示了曹雪芹的跨文化态度和宽容。在中国文化中，他还致力于帮助穷人和弱者。这是中国人的价值观，但也是整个人类文明共同的国际文化价值观。 | ||
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| + | ==4. 为什么会关注中国的近现代文学？== | ||
| + | 在我看来，有史以来最好的中国文学是唐诗（shi）。在散文文学中，我最喜欢像《红楼梦》这样的小说。尤其令人惊讶的是，这种体裁在250年前是多么的现代。中国第二好的文学是鲁迅等人在20世纪20年代创作的民国文学。他们不仅主导了建立白话文作为新的书面形式的艰巨任务，而且完全自由，他们从中国传统文学和西方文学中学习，并写出了当时全球最好的文学作品。鲁迅在他的文学作品中，如《狂人日记》、《阿Q正传》等，也采用了类似的实验，即把虚构的元素放到现实主义的环境中，就像卡夫卡的《变形记》一样。中国文学的这一高峰直到今天还没有达到。 | ||
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| + | 这就是为什么我对中国前现代和现代文学比对当代文学更感兴趣。然而，尽管中国文学在1927年出现了所谓的“engaged literature”（可译为：方向文学），具体提出“文艺为工农大众服务"的文学方向，自此后的中国文学，几乎都遵循这个思路，即将政治内容置于文学质量之上，从而文学失去了本应有的力量和质量。当然，当代文学仍然还有极少值得关注的作品。这些作品是值得翻译的。而且我仍然希望将来会有更多高质量的文学作品，这当然需要向外国文学学习（就像莫言向其他诺贝尔奖作品学习一样），而且作者需要能够说几种语言，走遍世界。我相信，在未来的中国，作者将能够再次自由写作，从而恢复到唐代和20世纪20年代产生的顶级文学作品的质量。 | ||
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| + | 中国的现代文学创造了一些世界上最好的文学作品。当然，当文学在1927年走上“方向文学”的道路后，整体质量下滑。但在此之前，中国文学具有百废俱兴的特点（中国的五四文学与二战后的德国文学有相似之处），是一个破旧立新的新时代。 | ||
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| + | ==5. 如果讲广受欢迎的中国近代文学是一部中国近代史的话，你认为中国当代文学作品有什么特点？== | ||
| + | 在此期间，大师级的叙述者告诉我们关于中国历史的某些年代，老舍的《茶馆》、巴金的《家》、钱钟书的《围城》、茅盾的《子夜》、莫言的《生死疲劳》，而在较近的时代，徐则臣描述了80年代以后的海淀生活，张洁的《沉重的翅膀》和余华的《兄弟》解释了改革开放政策的两面。 | ||
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| + | 当代文学是记录和呈现当代中国社会的。我们缺乏时间的距离来评估哪些当代文学作品会被认为是今天的代表。鸳鸯蝴蝶派是20世纪20年代的主流文学，但今天我们记住了叛逆的白话文是那个时代的代表。 | ||
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| + | 因此，今天的文学显得更加多样化。然而，现实本身在今天也显得更加多样化，人们住在隔壁，却互不相识，人们生活在过滤的泡沫中，失去了判断什么是真实和虚假的能力，失去了倾听、讨论和修正自己意见的能力。 | ||
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| + | 当代中国文学产生了英雄，我们需要更多的悲剧式英雄。它遵循着积极且中庸的叙述方式。它错过了替代性叙事，错过了像德国的君特·格拉斯（Guenther Grass）这样的权威批评家的声音，这在中国也是几千年来作家的原本角色，但这些作家在今天的中国都沉默了，或者已经移民了。据统计，中国人是世界上最聪明的民族。所以他们应该有足够的胸怀，根据中国 "和而不同 "的传统，允许不同的声音。 | ||
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| + | ==6. 当代作品没有像过去那样吸引到海外观众，在您看来原因是什么呢？它们是否和中国的古典文学有差距？== | ||
| + | 中国当代作家和现代作家之间的主要区别是，当代作家并不每天阅读外国文学作品，有部分的原因是他们不懂外语。获得诺贝尔奖的莫言就是这样的，尽管他阅读了其他获得诺贝尔文学奖的中译本作品。 | ||
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| + | 古典作家与当代作家的主要区别在于，当代作家并非一生都在接受文学训练。他们不会为了通过科举考试而努力工作数年。相反，他们被日常的平淡生活所压抑，他们考虑的是买房子等等。当然，他们也不可能像古代的文人墨客那样成为自由的思想家，因为他们生活在一个极其规范，甚至可能是过度规范的社会，加上科技的便利，此时的文学作品多多少少有着昙花一现的危险。他们的共同点也比较少，因为不同国家的过滤泡沫不同，甚至中国内部的过滤泡沫也不同。 | ||
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| + | 中国古代文学的精华，尤其是唐诗，具有永恒的价值，它们的作者已经赢得了永恒的地位。在古代，艺术转化的过程是极其漫长的，今天的作者可能用录音机记录下他们半生不熟的想法，在他们磕磕绊绊的完成之前就在网上发表。 | ||
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| + | ==7. 除去鲁迅、余秋雨等人的知名作品，你在挑选近现代翻译作品的时候有什么标准吗？== | ||
| + | 对我来说，最重要的原因是，如果一个故事抓住了我，也可能抓住我的目标文化的读者。让我用下面的例子来解释。 | ||
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| + | 看到程天送自小在银行业的环境下长大，最后读到他将茶叶倒入黄浦江，对外国茶商进行英雄式的、创造性的象征性抗议，这和在季宇的《新安家族》中简直是同一种阅读的乐趣。 | ||
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| + | 在韩少功的短篇小说集中，我们通过不同人的眼睛来阅读《空院残月》。令人印象深刻的是一个人在房子里读水表，并解释说在5号公寓里，一位奶奶和她的孩子住在一起，两人相继去世。对于水表刻度上的空白，叙述者解释说，由于人们害怕这两个女人的鬼魂，所以该公寓没有再租出去。叙述者描述了他如何记住女孩每天晚上回家时的台阶，并写道："一旦消失，夜深人静之时，我仰望泼入窗口的银月，会觉得夜晚缺失了什么"，像这样的描述在读者心中经久不衰。 | ||
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| + | 有时一个故事也会打动我，因为它描述了我熟悉的场景。徐则臣在《啊北京！》中描述的北京大学校园内外的学生和年轻毕业生的生活与我的记忆相吻合。故事里面，年轻人复杂的同居和三角恋爱关系，心怀诗人梦想的厨师等等，所有这些不易理解、似爱非爱的复杂情感关系构建了一幅幅生动的“北漂”形象。因此，即使没有去过那里的读者也能感受到那里的气氛。 | ||
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| + | 张炜是描绘浓郁气氛和神奇自然的大师。在他发表于同名短篇小说集的故事《海边的风》中，读者仅从某些人物（例如：瘦弱的孩子有着大肚腩等）的突然出现就意识到，这个国家一定处于饥荒之中，故事中的主人公是从海里捞鱼和制作美味鱼汤的专家，他们实际上是对生活在内陆的人们的拯救，他们最终也来到了岸上，并得到了拯救。 | ||
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| + | ==8. 像你提到，一部翻译作品的“异域感”是吸引外国读者阅读的原因之一，除此之外还有别的原因吗？（比如一部小说的历史性背景是否也是原因之一？)== | ||
| + | 好奇心是全世界读者的共同特征。“发现新大陆”或身临其境的阅读体验，好似进入一个全新时空，读者被其深深吸引。带有神秘感的地方和时间，因其异国情调而具有吸引力。你崇拜的地方和时间也是有吸引力的。这些可以是历史的转折点，也可以只是你喜欢的国家。中国要赢得全世界人民的心，还有很长的路要走，但它越是自由，越是干净，就会越成功。中国可能会恢复其古老的美德，如以事实为依据，将批评视为建设性的，承认自己在历史上的错误，帮助穷人、弱势群体和少数民族，将自己的语言、文化和民族放在最后，并保持谦逊。但是当它成功的时候，实际上可能会出现一个新的 "中国化 "的时代，世界上的人们只是想读更多的中国文学，因为所有中国的东西都被认为是 "花哨的"。 | ||
| + | |||
| + | ==9. 在做了这么多年的对比研究后，你认为中西方文学的关注点差异和共通点都有哪些？== | ||
| + | 主要的区别是，西方文学几乎没有限制。因此，中国作家的起点就不那么幸运了。因此，如果他们能写出几篇达到世界文学水平的作品，那就更了不起了。 | ||
| + | |||
| + | 另一个主要区别是，在西方文学中，人们对原创性和创造性的赞赏多于对精致的表达方式的肯定。 | ||
| + | |||
| + | 如果在西方文学中提到政府或政治，它们大多是以负面的方式被提及或被批评。在中国文学中，你能找到的对政府的批评只有对外国政府的批评。这使得西方读者有时无法继续阅读，因为不断的赞美，尤其是在宣传文学的范畴内，会吓跑读者。 | ||
| + | |||
| + | 文学首先是人类交流的一种方式，它连接着时间、空间和思想。作为文学的一个类别，民族变得越来越不重要。今天，我们有中国作家在美国用中文或英文写作。我们在全世界有一亿人在学习中文，他们可能会用原文阅读一篇或另一篇中国文学作品。 | ||
| + | |||
| + | ==10. 文学是文化交流中很重要的一点，是否可以通过文学翻译打破东西方的认知偏见？== | ||
| + | 文学也是生命交流的一个重要节点。当你深入到一部中国文学作品中时，你甚至会和中国的主人公交换生命。有什么比成为另一个社会和文化的一部分更能克服偏见的方法呢？ | ||
| + | |||
| + | 不是每个人都有能力和时间去旅行，了解不同的文化。特别是在新冠疫情期间，我们反而可以看一部纪录片或拿一本书。 | ||
| + | |||
| + | 在欧洲，我们发现，当那些在第二次世界大战中作为敌人互相厮杀的国家之间没有边界时，法国人几乎完全像德国人等等。如果没有教育告诉你，你是不同的，你就会从共同的东西开始。从太空中看，地球似乎是一个整体，没有边界。据统计，中国人是地球上最聪明的人。从和谐的概念来看，大同和中国56个民族都团结在一起成为中国公民是一样的道理，中国人深深感到，西藏人、维吾尔人、香港人、台湾人，甚至新加坡和美国的海外华人都是平等的，都有尊严。在这一点上，他们与 "一带一路 "倡议沿线的民族以及世界各地的所有不同民族是平等的。世界上许多人期望中国成为世界的新领袖。世界的目光现在都在关注中国，关注中国如何对待其各民族，如何实现 "和而不同 "的理念。 | ||
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| + | 我不认为普通人从一开始就有偏见。在孩童时代，他们不会进行区分、分类和污名化。你可以从性别角色中看到这一点。如果你把一个女孩打扮成男孩，人们会像对待男孩一样和她玩，踢足球，给她汽车玩具玩。如果你向他们解释那是个女孩，他们会道歉。 | ||
| + | |||
| + | =Interview by Lou Kang with Martin Woesler, June 20, 2022 (for Chinese, please see a few pages further up)= | ||
| + | |||
| + | ==1. Do you visit the local area before translating a novel that is particularly localized?== | ||
| + | Although there are also good translations of translators who have not visited the original sites, I think it is very important that the translator deeply immerses into the social-historical situation of the original. I met Jia Pingwa on Sep 21, 2014 in Xi'an and he showed me his home full of regional artefacts like wooden Taotie masks and explained the regional cultural roots of these artefacts to me. I have also heard from a lot of Chinese colleagues, who study foreign authors, that they visit the places of their works and their graves to get an impression of the atmosphere. A lot of actors dive into the life of the historical characters they are acting. | ||
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| + | I personally have spent as much time as I could on the traces of Cao Xueqin since when I was a student at Peking University. Very helpful were the Red Chamber Research Institute (中国艺术研究院红楼梦研究所), where I got the present of the Hongloumeng Dictionary 《红楼梦大辞典》, the Cao Xueqin Remembrance Site (曹雪芹纪念馆) at the foot of the Xiangshan, I have visted the reconstructed Daguanyuan (北京大观园), and the Gugong (故宫), have eaten some of the dishes presented in the novel and spent some time time in Nanking. | ||
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| + | The most I have learned from the diverse research literature in China and abroad and from attending Redology conferences in China, where the newest research results were presented by colleagues. I have read more about what was life like in the times of Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong and about Manchu culture, the Banner system. However, the main task is to take the readers by the hand and abduct to China 250 years back in time and to make the bustling life of that time become alive again. To bring the novel into today's world, I also participated in a project to recreate the novel in the form of a D Book, which is a pocket size book adding songs and video clips to the novel text with QR codes, visible on smart devices and also on Google glasses, one of the most successful items at the Frankfurt book fair. In this way, we could also win younger readers in Germany to read this Chinese classic. | ||
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| + | I have done so similarly with Mian Mian's novel Panda Sex, I visited her in Shanghai and she showed me all the places who appear in the novel. What I found out there was, that the novel was actually a recording of her life. Similarly, I met Wang Meng on December 2, 1992 and several times later in Germany and at Harvard University. On May 25, 2009, I spoke with Han Han on the phone, I read his blogs, watched his films and TV series, when I translated three of his novels. I also introduced Han Han's interview to the German readers in the most important German newspaper. On September 12, 2009, I met Mo Yan in Frankfurt three years before he was awarded the Nobel Prize. I published an interview with him and introduced him more to German readers. All of these were only a tiny mosaic part of his promotion to be awarded the prize. I met Yu Hua in Beijing and was impressed, that this great author treated his translators without any airs and graces, but as equals. | ||
| + | |||
| + | ==2. Can you take the example of the Dream of the Red Chamber: How to avoid cultural gaps in the translation of ancient Chinese works?== | ||
| + | There are gaps in time and space. When Jia Baoyu addresses his grandmother, he does not call her "grandma", but "Jia Mu", the same with his father, mother, cousins etc., which are addressed with their absolute, not relative position, like "third master" etc. This is common 250 years ago in China, and it was common 250 years ago in Europe. So it is more a gap in time than in culture. Therefore, if the translator decides to follow the strategy of “communicative translation”, he may turn it into the direct form "grandma, father, mother" to make the text better understandable (localization). If one values the authenticity of the original and the last manuscript version of the author before publication, one can keep the original indirect addressing, making the text sound more distant and formal (foreignization) to today's readers. | ||
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| + | The language in the Red Chamber Dreams is more indirect, sexuality is mostly described with "the joy of clouds and rain". Minford has solved that problem by describing two scenes in more detail than they are described in the original. | ||
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| + | Even the plants described in the novel are not so common in Europe. In Europe, the trees who keep their needle like green leaves even during the winter, are "conifers", with the "pine" as the most common sort. In China, the "Platycladus Orientalis", is seen most often. Both trees belong to the "coniferous" trees, the most obvious difference is that the leaves are thin almost like needles in Europe, but larger in China. However, when translating the conifer (柏) with "Platycladus Orientalis", European readers will always think of an exotic environment. This translation strategy is called "foreignization". In the original, mentioning the "conifer" was mainly to create an impression of ever green trees common in Qing China. Therefore, it is considerable to translate "柏", "柏树", "松柏树" with "conifer", a strategy called "localization". This makes sure that the European reader is not mislead and does not pay attention to unwanted details, but can follow the story line. | ||
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| + | However, the "localization" of the law enforcement troops in the novel, who confiscate the Jia's families fortune and capture family members, fulfill functions like todays police in the West. However, to translate the law enforcement troops with "police" may astonish the readers at that place in the story, because it sounds modern. Therefore, the more foreignizing, even exoticizing term "gold jackets" may appear more appropriate. These kinds of choices have constantly to be made in the translation process and everybody may have a different opinion, what choices are the most appropriate, however, nobody frees the translator from the burden to make the choices. Important is, that a translator should never stick to his first choice for all of the different revised editions during his or her lifetime. A translator should always be open to suggestions from colleagues, Redology experts and readers. Therefore, to translate a word in one way may be a good choice in the 2000's and to translate it differently may be a good choice in the 2020's. It also depends on the targeted readers and what impression one wants to leave on them. If the targeted readers are Redologists, one can stick more to the original and give less explanations (foreignization), if the targeted readers are the masses, one may be freer and bring the text closer to the readers (localization). | ||
| + | |||
| + | ==3. What are the most troublesome translation problems encountered in translation? What are the cultural differences that cause them== | ||
| + | Like escimos, who have several terms to describe "snow", there are some terms in Chinese who have more terms in Western languages so that the translator needs to decide. One of the more difficult tasks was that the term "姑娘", which is used not only by masters addressing their offspring, but also addressing their servants and even by the servants addressing female masters, like Lin Daiyu (e.g. chapter 82). So it needs to be translated into "Master", "daughter", "Miss" depending on who is using it to address whom. Sometimes one term in Chinese describes several different things in Western languages, so you have to decide as translators. Most troublesome is background knowledge of Chinese readers, especially with parts of Chinese characters referred to, motifs in poems, which refer back to a whole cosmos of earlier poems and stories they evoke in the Chinese readers minds. When Lin Daiyu quotes verses from the "West Chamber", Jia Baoyu immediately knows that she is in love with him. These subtle things need to be expressed between the lines, without that the Western readers know the "Romance of the Western Chamber". | ||
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| + | Here are some examples, where further explanations in the text or annotations are helpful: In chapter 92, Baoyu mentions several historical female figures familiar to the Chinese reader, but not to the Western: "[...]班婕妤、蔡文姬、谢道韫诸人。" This became a very long translation in German: "die belesene Konkubine des Herrschers Tscheng-di von Han Ban Djie-yü und die zwei Dichterinnen Tsai Wën-dji und Hsie Dau-yün". | ||
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| + | Troublesome are also culture-loaded words, like when names for Chinese clothing, Chinese dishes and customs are mentioned. Some of these terms are not totally clear even for Chinese readers. In these cases, the translation needs to give more explanations in order to keep the focus of the reader on the story and not to distract them with things, which were not intended to distract the original readers. Also superstitious beliefs (迷信) are mentioned at several places in the novel. Sometimes we have "false friends", e.g. when a witch is sticking needles into puppets. This is familiar to us with the witches tradition and the Woodoo cult. However, we can not simply use the familiar Western terms for it, because these cultural parallels have their local genuine traditions and may have developed independently from another or there have been some kind of cultural exchanges. In any case it is important to make differences clear and not to make the reader mix up things. Also that Jia Zheng in chapter 120 is not recognizing his son Jia Baoyu, who is somehow leaving the earthly world, is parallel to stories familiar to Western readers from the bible. However, even these paralells earn an appropriate translation in their local tradition and context to raise awareness for cultural traditions. | ||
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| + | At one time, the clothes of the Prince of Beijing are referred to as he was wearing the 江牙海水五爪龙 pattern. Without explanations, Western readers may not know that the expression is colloquial for the pattern 海水江崖纹, which displays five claw dragons above troubled river water, and that this pattern was reserved for the emperor or the imperial family. Therefore mentioning this pattern detail of his clothes supports the high position and authority of the Prince of Beijing. A lot of clothes are described and many of them mix Manchu and Han culture, even Western materials and influences can be found. Many of the cultural items described in the novel are not genuinely Chinese, but found their present appearance through mixing and mingling. Cao Xueqin plays with the different cultures and even reduces hints to set his novel in Qing Dynasty. This is not only a way to create a timeless novel of eternal value, it shows the intercultural attitude and tolerancce of Cao Xueqin. Also within the Chinese culture, he was engaged to help the poor and the weak. This is a Chinese value, but it is also a common international value of human civilization throughout cultures. | ||
| + | |||
| + | ==4. Why do you care about modern Chinese literature?== | ||
| + | In my view, the best Chinese literature ever written was Tang poetry (shi). Among prose literature, I like novels like the Red Chamber Dreams most. It is especially astonishing how modern this genre was 250 years ago. The 2nd best Chinese literature was Republican literature by Lu Xun and others in the 1920s. They not only mastered the difficult task to establish baihuawen as the new written form, but were totally free, learned from both traditional Chinese and Western literature, and wrote the best literature globally at that time. Lu Xun used similar experiments in his literature like Madman's diary, the true story of A Q etc., namely to put a fictional element into a realist setting, like Kafka with the "Metamorphosis". This peak of Chinese literature is unreached until today. | ||
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| + | This is why I am more interested in premodern and modern Chinese literature than in the contemporary one. However, even though Chinese literature has lost quality when it took the path of the so-called "engaged literature" in 1927, putting political contents over literary quality, there are still extremely few but notable works of contemporary literature. These are worth to be translated. And I still hope that there will be more high quality literature in the future, which of course needs to learn from foreign literature (like Mo Yan learned from other Nobel Prize works) and which authors need to be able to speak several languages and travel the world. I am sure that in a future China, authors will be able to write freer again and therefore return to the top quality of literature produced in Tang Dynasty and in the 1920s. | ||
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| + | Modern literature in China created simply some of the best works of literature in the world. Of course the quality deteriorated, when literature took the path of engaged literature in 1927. But before that was a time of experiments, iconoclasm, Zero-point-literature (the Chinese May Fourth literature has parallels to the German literature after World War II), and Breakup. | ||
| + | |||
| + | ==5. If the popular modern Chinese literature is a history of modern China, what do you think are the characteristics of contemporary Chinese literature?== | ||
| + | In the meantime, master narrators tell us certain decades of Chinese history, Lao She's Tea House, Ba Jin's Family, Qian Zhongshu's Weicheng, Mao Dun's Ziye, Mo Yan's Life and Death are wearing me out, and in newer times Xu Zechen describes life in Haidian since the 1980's, Zhang Jie's Heavy Wings and Yu Hua's "Brothers" explain both sides of the medal of the Reform and Opening Policy. | ||
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| + | Contemporary literature is documenting and presenting contemporay Chinese society. We lack the distance of time to evaluate what works of contemporary literature will be regarded as representative for today. Mandarin duck and butterfly literature (鸳鸯蝴蝶派) was the mainstream literature of the 1920s, but today we remember the rebellious baihua literature as being representative of that time. | ||
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| + | So the literature appears more diverse today. However, reality itself appears also more diverse today, with people living next door without knowing each other, with people living in filter bubbles and losing the ability to judge what is real and what is fake, to listen, to discuss and to revise their own opinions. | ||
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| + | Contemporary Chinese literature produces heros, we need more tragic heros. It follows the paths of affirmative, system stabilizing narratives. It misses alternative narratives, the voice of authoritative critical authors like Guenther Grass in Germany, which also in China was the original role of authors for millenia, but these authors are silent in today's China or have emigrated. According to statistics, Chinese are the most intelligent ethnicity in the world. So they should be generous enough to allow different voices according to the Chinese tradition of "harmonic but of a different opinion" (和而不同). | ||
| + | |||
| + | ==6. In your opinion, what are the reasons why contemporary works do not attract overseas audiences as much as they did in the past? Is there a gap between them and the classical Chinese literature?== | ||
| + | The main difference between contemporary and modern Chinese authors is, that the contemporary ones do not read foreign literature on a daily basis, also because they don't know foreign languages any more. Mo Yan, who won the Nobel Prize, has done so, although he read other works which have won the Nobel Prize of literature in Chinese translation. | ||
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| + | The main difference between classical authors and contemporary authors is, that contemporary authors are not trained all their life in letters. They do not work hard for several years to pass the Keju. Instead, they are silenced by the banalities of the everyday, they think about buying a flat etc. And of course they cannot be such free thinkers as their counterparts in ancient times, because they live in an extremely regulated, maybe even overregulated and short-living society. They also have less common ground, because the filter bubbles of different countries differ and even the filter bubbles within China. | ||
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| + | The best of ancient Chinese literature, especially Tang poetry, is of timeless value, their authors have earned a place in eternity. The artistic transformation process was extremely long in ancient times, today authors may record their half-cooked thoughts by voice recorder and publish them online before they have finished their stumblings. | ||
| + | |||
| + | ==7. Apart from the well-known works of Lu Xun and Yu Qiuyu, do you have any criteria for selecting modern works for translation?== | ||
| + | The most important reason to me is, if a story grabs me, and may also grab the readers of my target culture. Let me explain this with the following examples: | ||
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| + | To see Cheng Tiansong grow up in the bank business and finally reading of his heroic and creative symbolic protest against foreign tea traders, when he dumped tea leaves into the Huangpu river is simply a joy to read in Ji Yu's Die Clans von Xin'an. | ||
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| + | In Han Shaogong's collection of short stories Fading moon over the abandoned courtyard, we read through the eyes of different people. Impressive is the perspective of a person reading water meters in a house and explaining that in flat no. 5 a grandmother lived with her child and both died one after the other. Starting from the gap in the list of meter figures, the narrator explains that the flat is not rented out again because people fear the ghosts of the two women. The narrator describes, how he remembers the steps of the girl when she came home every night and writes: "Since these steps disappeared, I looked out of the window into the quiet night to the moon. It was as if something was missing in the night." Descriptions like this last in the mind of the readers. | ||
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| + | Sometimes a story also touches me because it describes scenes familiar to me. The life of students and young graduates on and around the campus of Peking University described by Xu Zechen in Ah Beijing! matches my memories. The cohabiting of young people, the complex relations, work as cook and being a rebel poet, all of these seemingly weird constellations create a lively portray of Peking University campus. Therefore even readers who have never been there can feel the atmosphere there. | ||
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| + | Zhang Wei is a master of dense atmosphere and magic-realistic description of nature. In his story Sea wind, published in the collection of short stories of the same title, the reader only from sudden appearance of certain characters (thin children with large stomachs etc.) realizes, that the country must be in a famine and that the protagonists of the story, who are experts in getting fish out of the sea and creating delicious fish soup, actually are the salvation for the people living further inland, who finally also come to the shore and are saved. | ||
| + | |||
| + | ==8. As you mentioned, the "exoticism" of a translated work is one of the reasons that attracts foreign readers to read it. Which other reasons are there? (For example, is the historical context of a novel also a reason?)== | ||
| + | Curiosity is a common characteristic of readers all around the world. To discover something new or to experience it immersively, for example to dive into a different place and different time, is attractive. Places and times, which bear mystery, are attractive because of their exoticism. Places and times you adore are also attractive. These can be historical turning points or simply a country you like. China still has a long way to win the hearts of people around the world, but it will be successful the freer and the cleaner it becomes. China may revive their ancient virtues like to base things on merits, to consider criticism as constructive, to admit if one was wrong in ones history, to help the poor, the disadvantaged and the minorities, to put ones own language, culture and nation last, and to be humble. But when it will be successful, then there actually may come a new time of "Chinoiserie", where people in the world simply want to read more Chinese literature, because everything which is Chinese is considered "fancy". | ||
| + | |||
| + | ==9. After so many years of comparative research, what do you think are the differences and commonalities between the concerns of Chinese and Western literature?== | ||
| + | The main difference is that Western literature is almost not restricted. Therefore Chinese Writers have a less fortunate starting point. Therefore it is even more remarkable if they produce a few pieces at the level of world literature. | ||
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| + | Another main difference is that in Western literature, originality and creativity is appreciated more than rafinesse in expression. | ||
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| + | If in Western literature governments or politics are mentioned, they are mostly mentioned in a negative way or criticized. In Chinese literature, the only criticism of governments you find is the one of foreign governments. This makes is sometimes impossible for a Western reader to continue reading, because the constant praise, especially in the category of propaganda literature, scares readers off. | ||
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| + | Literature first of all is a way of human communication which bridges time, space and minds. The nation becomes less and less important as a category of literature. Today we have Chinese writers who write in Chinese in America or in English. We have 100 million people worldwide who learn Chinese and who may read the one or other piece of Chinese literature in its original language. | ||
| + | |||
| + | ==10. Literature is an important point of cultural exchange. Is it possible to break down the perceived bias between East and West through literary translation?== | ||
| + | Literature is also an important point of exchange of lives. When you dive deep into a piece of Chinese literature, you even switch lifes with a Chinese protagonist. What is a better way to overcome prejudices than to be a part of another society and culture? | ||
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| + | Not everybody has the means and time to travel to understand different cultures. Especially during the pandemic, we can instead watch a documentary or take a book. | ||
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| + | In Europe, we have discovered that when there are no borders between countries who have fought each other as enemies in the second world war, that French people are almost totally like Germans etc. If no education tells you that you are different, you start from the common things. From the space, the earth seems one, with no borders. According to statistics, Chinese people are the most intelligent people on earth. From concepts of harmony, datong and the Chinese 56 ethnicities all united in the Chinese citizens, Chinese deeply feel, that Tibetans, Uighurs, people from Hong Kong, Taiwan and even oversea's Chinese in Singapore and the United States all are equal and earn dignity. And in this, they are equal with the ethnicities along the Belt and Road initiative and with all the different ethnicities around the world. Many people in the world expect China to be the new leader of the world. The world's eyes are on China now, how China treats its ethnicities and how it realizes the concepts of "he er bu tong". | ||
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| + | I don't think that ordinary people have prejudices from the very beginning. When children grow up, they don't differentiate, classify and stigmatize. You can see that with the gender roles. If you dress a girl as a boy, people will play with her as with a boy, play soccer and give her car toys to play. If you explain to them that it was a girl, they apologize. | ||
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| + | =ENGLISH-CHINESE 对照= | ||
| + | |||
| + | ==1 Do you visit the local area before translating a novel that is particularly localized?== | ||
| + | Although there are also good translations of translators who have not visited the original sites, I think it is very important that the translator deeply immerses into the social-historical situation of the original. I met Jia Pingwa on Sep 21, 2014 in Xi'an and he showed me his home full of regional artefacts like wooden Taotie masks and explained the regional cultural roots of these artefacts to me. I have also heard from a lot of Chinese colleagues, who study foreign authors, that they visit the places of their works and their graves to get an impression of the atmosphere. A lot of actors dive into the life of the historical characters they are acting. | ||
| + | 虽然不可否认，仍然有不少优秀的翻译作品其译者没有机会走访书中所述之处，但我个人认为，实地走访文中场景是十分重要的，这样译者可以深深的沉浸在原作所处的社会和历史环境中。2014年9月21日我在西安与贾平凹见面，他给我展示了他家里的木制饕餮面具等具有地区特色的收藏品，并向我解释了这些收藏品的地域文化根源。我也从许多研究外国作家的中国同事的口中得知，他们走访过原文的发生地，也走访过原文作者们的墓地，以此获得更深层的感受。许多演员也都潜心研究和体验他们所饰历史人物的生活。 | ||
| + | I personally have spent as much time as I could on the traces of Cao Xueqin since when I was a student at Peking University. Very helpful were the Red Chamber Research Institute (中国艺术研究院红楼梦研究所), where I got the present of the Hongloumeng Dictionary 《红楼梦大辞典》, the Cao Xueqin Remembrance Site (曹雪芹纪念馆) at the foot of the Xiangshan, I have visted the reconstructed Daguanyuan (北京大观园), and the Gugong (故宫), have eaten some of the dishes presented in the novel and spent some time time in Nanking. | ||
| + | 从在北京大学读书时起，我就尽量花费较多的时间研究曹雪芹的生平。中国艺术研究院红楼梦研究所给了我很多帮助，他们送给了我《红楼梦大辞典》，我还走访了位于香山脚下的曹雪芹纪念馆，也曾到访过重建的北京大观园，除此之外，还参观过故宫，品尝了小说里提及的各种菜肴，我也在南京待过一段时间。 | ||
| + | The most I have learned from the diverse research literature in China and abroad and from attending Redology conferences in China, where the newest research results were presented by colleagues. I have read more about what was life like in the times of Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong and about Manchu culture, the Banner system. However, the main task is to take the readers by the hand and abduct to China 250 years back in time and to make the bustling life of that time become alive again. To bring the novel into today's world, I also participated in a project to recreate the novel in the form of a D Book, which is a pocket size book adding songs and video clips to the novel text with QR codes, visible on smart devices and also on Google glasses, one of the most successful items at the Frankfurt book fair. In this way, we could also win younger readers in Germany to read this Chinese classic. | ||
| + | 我学到最多的是中国和国外的各种文学研究文献，以及参加中国的红学研讨会，同事们在会上分享最新的研究成果。我更多的读了关于康熙、雍正和乾隆时代的生活以及满族文化、八旗制度等。当然，我主要的任务是牵着读者的手，带他们穿越回250年前的中国，让那个时代的繁华生活重新变得鲜活。为了将这部小说带入当今世界，我还参与了一个项目，以D书的形式重现这部小说，这是一本袖珍书，在小说文本中加入歌曲和视频片段的二维码，在智能设备和谷歌眼镜上可见，是法兰克福书展上最成功的项目之一。通过这种方式，我们也可以赢得德国年轻读者来阅读这部中国经典作品。 | ||
| + | I have done so similarly with Mian Mian's novel Panda Sex, I visited her in Shanghai and she showed me all the places who appear in the novel. What I found out there was, that the novel was actually a recording of her life. Similarly, I met Wang Meng on December 2, 1992 and several times later in Germany and at Harvard University. On May 25, 2009, I spoke with Han Han on the phone, I read his blogs, watched his films and TV series, when I translated three of his novels. I also introduced Han Han's interview to the German readers in the most important German newspaper. On September 12, 2009, I met Mo Yan in Frankfurt three years before he was awarded the Nobel Prize. I published an interview with him and introduced him more to German readers. All of these were only a tiny mosaic part of his promotion to be awarded the prize. I met Yu Hua in Beijing and was impressed, that this great author treated his translators without any airs and graces, but as equals. | ||
| + | 我在翻译绵绵的小说《熊猫》时也曾做过类似的工作。我在上海拜访了她，她带我看了小说中出现的所有地方。我在那里发现，这部小说实际上是对她生活的记录。同样，我在1992年12月2日见到了王蒙，后来又在德国和哈佛大学见过几次。2009年5月25日，我与韩寒通了电话，我读了他的博客和杂志，看了他拍摄的电影，翻译了他的三部小说，还在德国最重要的报纸上向德国读者介绍了韩寒的访谈。2009年9月12日，在莫言获得诺贝尔奖三年之前，我在法兰克福见到了他。我发表了对他的采访，并向德国读者更多地介绍了他。这些只是他获得诺奖的很小的一块镶嵌。我在北京见到了余华，印象深刻的是，这位伟大的作家对待他的译者没有任何架子，而是平等相待。 | ||
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| + | Can you take the example of the Dream of the Red Chamber: How to avoid cultural gaps in the translation of ancient Chinese works?[edit] | ||
| + | There are gaps in time and space. When Jia Baoyu addresses his grandmother, he does not call her "grandma", but "Jia Mu", the same with his father, mother, cousins etc., which are addressed with their absolute, not relative position, like "third master" etc. This is common 250 years ago in China, and it was common 250 years ago in Europe. So it is more a gap in time than in culture. Therefore, if the translator decides to follow the strategy of “communicative translation”, he may turn it into the direct form "grandma, father, mother" to make the text better understandable (localization). If one values the authenticity of the original and the last manuscript version of the author before publication, one can keep the original indirect addressing, making the text sound more distant and formal (foreignization) to today's readers. | ||
| + | 《红楼梦》在时间和空间上存在着差距。当贾宝玉称呼他的祖母时，他不叫她 "奶奶"，而是叫 "贾母"，他的父亲、母亲、表兄弟等也是如此，他们如外人那样直呼其名，而不是因亲戚关系按照不同地位而有不同称谓，如 "三爷 "等。这在250年前的中国很常见，而在250年前的欧洲也很常见。所以与其说是文化上的差距，不如说是时间上的差距。因此，如果译者决定遵循“交际翻译”策略，他可以把它直接变成 "奶奶、爸爸、妈妈 "，使文本更好地被理解（本地化）。如果重视原作的真实性和作者出版前的最后一个手稿版本，可以保留原来的间接称呼，使文本在今天的读者听起来更遥远和正式（外国化）。 | ||
| + | The language in the Red Chamber Dreams is more indirect, sexuality is mostly described with "the joy of clouds and rain". Minford has solved that problem by describing two scenes in more detail than they are described in the original. | ||
| + | 《红楼梦》中的语言比较间接，性生活多以 "云雨之欢 "来描述。闵福德解决了这个问题，他对两个场景的描述比原著中的描述更详细。 | ||
| + | Even the plants described in the novel are not so common in Europe. In Europe, the trees who keep their needle like green leaves even during the winter, are "conifers", with the "pine" as the most common sort. In China, the "Platycladus Orientalis", is seen most often. Both trees belong to the "coniferous" trees, the most obvious difference is that the leaves are thin almost like needles in Europe, but larger in China. However, when translating the conifer (柏) with "Platycladus Orientalis", European readers will always think of an exotic environment. This translation strategy is called "foreignization". In the original, mentioning the "conifer" was mainly to create an impression of ever green trees common in Qing China. Therefore, it is considerable to translate "柏", "柏树", "松柏树" with "conifer", a strategy called "localization". This makes sure that the European reader is not mislead and does not pay attention to unwanted details, but can follow the story line. | ||
| + | 即使是小说中描述的植物，在欧洲也不那么常见。在欧洲，即使在冬季也能保持针状绿叶的树木是 "常绿乔木、常青树"，其中 "松树 "是最常见的一种。在中国，最常看到的是 "东方红"（Platycladus Orientalis）。这两种树都属于 "conifer(常绿乔木、常青树、松树)"，最明显的区别是，欧洲的叶子很薄，几乎像针叶，而中国的叶子则较大。然而，当用 "Platycladus Orientalis "来翻译柏树时，欧洲读者总是会想到一个异国的环境。这种翻译策略被称为 "外国化"。在原文中，提到 "松树"主要是为了给人留下清代中国常见的常青树的印象。因此，将"柏"、"柏树"、"松柏树 "翻译成 "conifer(松树)"是完全可以的，这种策略称为 "本地化"。这确保了欧洲读者不会被误导，不会注意到不需要的细节，而是能够跟随故事的脉络发展。 | ||
| + | However, the "localization" of the law enforcement troops in the novel, who confiscate the Jia's families fortune and capture family members, fulfill functions like todays police in the West. However, to translate the law enforcement troops with "police" may astonish the readers at that place in the story, because it sounds modern. Therefore, the more foreignizing, even exoticizing term "gold jackets" may appear more appropriate. These kinds of choices have constantly to be made in the translation process and everybody may have a different opinion, what choices are the most appropriate, however, nobody frees the translator from the burden to make the choices. Important is, that a translator should never stick to his first choice for all of the different revised editions during his or her lifetime. A translator should always be open to suggestions from colleagues, Redology experts and readers. Therefore, to translate a word in one way may be a good choice in the 2000's and to translate it differently may be a good choice in the 2020's. It also depends on the targeted readers and what impression one wants to leave on them. If the targeted readers are Redologists, one can stick more to the original and give less explanations (foreignization), if the targeted readers are the masses, one may be freer and bring the text closer to the readers (localization). | ||
| + | 然而，小说中的执法者被称为“锦衣军”，他们没收贾家的财产，抓捕家庭成员，履行了西方今天的警察职能。然而，用 "警察 "来翻译“锦衣军”这样“本土化”的名词可能会使读者感到惊讶，因为这听起来很现代。因此，更加外国化，甚至异国情调的术语“gold jackets”可能会显得更加合适。在整个翻译过程中，会不断需要译者去做出选择，每个人都可能有不同的意见，什么选择是最合适的？没有人把译者从做出选择的负担中解放出来。重要的是，译者在他或她的一生中，不应一直坚持他最初的选择，译者应始终对同事、红学专家和读者的建议持开放态度。因此，以一种方式翻译一个词，在2000年可能是一个好的选择，而以不同的方式翻译，在2020年可能是一个更好的选择。这也取决于目标读者以及译者希望给他们留下什么印象。如果目标读者是红学家，就可以更多地坚持原文，少做解释（外国化），如果目标读者是大众，就可以更自由，让文本更接近读者（本地化）。 | ||
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| + | 3 What are the most troublesome translation problems encountered in translation? What are the cultural differences that cause them[edit] | ||
| + | Like escimos, who have several terms to describe "snow", there are some terms in Chinese who have more terms in Western languages so that the translator needs to decide. One of the more difficult tasks was that the term "姑娘", which is used not only by masters addressing their offspring, but also addressing their servants and even by the servants addressing female masters, like Lin Daiyu (e.g. chapter 82). So it needs to be translated into "Master", "daughter", "Miss" depending on who is using it to address whom. Sometimes one term in Chinese describes several different things in Western languages, so you have to decide as translators. Most troublesome is background knowledge of Chinese readers, especially with parts of Chinese characters referred to, motifs in poems, which refer back to a whole cosmos of earlier poems and stories they evoke in the Chinese readers minds. When Lin Daiyu quotes verses from the "West Chamber", Jia Baoyu immediately knows that she is in love with him. These subtle things need to be expressed between the lines, without that the Western readers know the "Romance of the Western Chamber". | ||
| + | 就像爱斯基摩人，他们有许多专门的词来描述 "雪"一样，有些中文词在西方语言中有更多不同对应的词，因此，译者需要做出决定。例如一个比较困难的点是，"姑娘 "这个词，不仅可以是主人对晚辈的称呼，也可以是对仆人的称呼，甚至是仆人对女主人的称呼，比如林黛玉（如第82章）。所以它需要被翻译成 "主人"、"女儿"、"小姐"，这取决于谁用它来称呼谁。有时一个汉语词语在西方语言中表示不同的几种东西，所以作为译者，你们必须做出决定。最棘手的是中国读者的背景知识，特别是提到的汉字的偏旁部首，还有如同宇宙那样丰富的早期诗词的边边角角），这些都牵动中国读者的神经。当林黛玉引用《西厢记》中的诗句时，贾宝玉立即知道她爱上了他。这些微妙的东西需要在字里行间表达出来，而不是让西方读者先知道《西厢记》。 | ||
| + | Here are some examples, where further explanations in the text or annotations are helpful: In chapter 92, Baoyu mentions several historical female figures familiar to the Chinese reader, but not to the Western: "[...]班婕妤、蔡文姬、谢道韫诸人。" This became a very long translation in German: "die belesene Konkubine des Herrschers Tscheng-di von Han Ban Djie-yü und die zwei Dichterinnen Tsai Wën-dji und Hsie Dau-yün". | ||
| + | 这里有例子，在文本中做出进一步的解释或注释，会更有助于理解：在第92章中，宝玉提到了几个中国读者熟悉的历史女性人物，但西方人并不熟悉。"[...]班婕妤、蔡文姬、谢道韫诸人。" 这在德语中成为一个很长的翻译："[...]汉成帝饱读诗书的嫔妃班婕妤，以及博学多才的两位女性诗人蔡文姬和谢道韫。("die belesene Konkubine des Herrschers Tscheng-di von Han Ban Djie-yü and die zwei Dichterinnen Tsai Wën-dji und Hsie Dau-yün")。 | ||
| + | Troublesome are also culture-loaded words, like when names for Chinese clothing, Chinese dishes and customs are mentioned. Some of these terms are not totally clear even for Chinese readers. In these cases, the translation needs to give more explanations in order to keep the focus of the reader on the story and not to distract them with things, which were not intended to distract the original readers. Also superstitious beliefs (迷信) are mentioned at several places in the novel. Sometimes we have "false friends", e.g. when a witch is sticking needles into puppets. This is familiar to us with the witches tradition and the Woodoo cult. However, we can not simply use the familiar Western terms for it, because these cultural parallels have their local genuine traditions and may have developed independently from another or there have been some kind of cultural exchanges. In any case it is important to make differences clear and not to make the reader mix up things. Also that Jia Zheng in chapter 120 is not recognizing his son Jia Baoyu, who is somehow leaving the earthly world, is parallel to stories familiar to Western readers from the bible. However, even these paralells earn an appropriate translation in their local tradition and context to raise awareness for cultural traditions. | ||
| + | 令人头疼的还有一些带有文化色彩的词汇，比如关于中国服装、中国菜肴和习俗的名称。其中一些专业术语即使对中国读者来说也不完全清楚。在这种情况下，译者需要给出更多的解释，以保持读者对故事的关注，而不是让他们分心，因为这些东西并不打算分散原文读者的注意力。另外，小说中多处提到了迷信（superstitious beliefs）。有时我们会有 "假友"，例如，当巫婆将针刺入布偶时，这是我们熟悉的女巫历史和巫毒崇拜。然而，我们不能简单地用熟悉的西方词语来形容它，因为这些文化上的相似之处有其当地的真正传统，可能是独立发展的，也可能是与某种文化交流形成。在任何情况下，重要的是要把差异说清楚，不要让读者把事情搞混。另外，第120章中的贾政认不出来他的儿子贾宝玉，而贾宝玉却以某种方式离开了尘世，这与西方读者熟悉的《圣经》中的故事是类似的。然而，即使是这些相似的故事，在当地的传统和背景下也能获得适当的翻译，以提高对文化传统的认知。 | ||
| + | At one time, the clothes of the Prince of Beijing are referred to as he was wearing the 江牙海水五爪龙 pattern. Without explanations, Western readers may not know that the expression is colloquial for the pattern 海水江崖纹, which displays five claw dragons above troubled river water, and that this pattern was reserved for the emperor or the imperial family. Therefore mentioning this pattern detail of his clothes supports the high position and authority of the Prince of Beijing. A lot of clothes are described and many of them mix Manchu and Han culture, even Western materials and influences can be found. Many of the cultural items described in the novel are not genuinely Chinese, but found their present appearance through mixing and mingling. Cao Xueqin plays with the different cultures and even reduces hints to set his novel in Qing Dynasty. This is not only a way to create a timeless novel of eternal value, it shows the intercultural attitude and tolerancce of Cao Xueqin. Also within the Chinese culture, he was engaged to help the poor and the weak. This is a Chinese value, but it is also a common international value of human civilization throughout cultures. | ||
| + | 有一次，北静王的衣服被称为穿着“江牙海水五爪龙”图案。如果没有解释，西方读者可能不知道这种说法是对海水江崖纹的俗称，即在混乱的江水上显示五爪龙，而这种图案是为皇帝或皇室保留的。因此，提到他衣服上的这一图案细节，支持了北静王的崇高地位和权威。书中描述了很多衣服，其中很多都混合了满族和汉族文化，甚至还可以找到西方的来源和影响。小说中描述的许多文化现象或产品并不是纯汉文化的，也不是纯满族文化的，而是通过混合和融合呈现在小说里。曹雪芹玩转不同的文化，甚至减少小说设定在清朝的暗示。这不仅是创造具有永恒价值的小说的一种方式，而且显示了曹雪芹的跨文化态度和宽容。在中国文化中，他还致力于帮助穷人和弱者。这是中国人的价值观，但也是整个人类文明共同的国际文化价值观。 | ||
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| + | 4 Why do you care about modern Chinese literature?[edit] | ||
| + | In my view, the best Chinese literature ever written was Tang poetry (shi). Among prose literature, I like novels like the Red Chamber Dreams most. It is especially astonishing how modern this genre was 250 years ago. The 2nd best Chinese literature was Republican literature by Lu Xun and others in the 1920s. They not only mastered the difficult task to establish baihuawen as the new written form, but were totally free, learned from both traditional Chinese and Western literature, and wrote the best literature globally at that time. Lu Xun used similar experiments in his literature like Madman's diary, the true story of A Q etc., namely to put a fictional element into a realist setting, like Kafka with the "Metamorphosis". This peak of Chinese literature is unreached until today. | ||
| + | 在我看来，有史以来最好的中国文学是唐诗（shi）。在散文文学中，我最喜欢像《红楼梦》这样的小说。尤其令人惊讶的是，这种体裁在250年前是多么的现代。中国第二好的文学是鲁迅等人在20世纪20年代创作的民国文学。他们不仅主导了建立白话文作为新的书面形式的艰巨任务，而且完全自由，他们从中国传统文学和西方文学中学习，并写出了当时全球最好的文学作品。鲁迅在他的文学作品中，如《狂人日记》、《阿Q正传》等，也采用了类似的实验，即把虚构的元素放到现实主义的环境中，就像卡夫卡的《变形记》一样。中国文学的这一高峰直到今天还没有达到。 | ||
| + | This is why I am more interested in premodern and modern Chinese literature than in the contemporary one. However, even though Chinese literature has lost quality when it took the path of the so-called "engaged literature" in 1927, putting political contents over literary quality, there are still extremely few but notable works of contemporary literature. These are worth to be translated. And I still hope that there will be more high quality literature in the future, which of course needs to learn from foreign literature (like Mo Yan learned from other Nobel Prize works) and which authors need to be able to speak several languages and travel the world. I am sure that in a future China, authors will be able to write freer again and therefore return to the top quality of literature produced in Tang Dynasty and in the 1920s. | ||
| + | 这就是为什么我对中国前现代和现代文学比对当代文学更感兴趣。然而，尽管中国文学在1927年出现了所谓的“engaged literature”（可译为：方向文学），具体提出“文艺为工农大众服务"的文学方向，自此后的中国文学，几乎都遵循这个思路，即将政治内容置于文学质量之上，从而文学失去了本应有的力量和质量。当然，当代文学仍然还有极少值得关注的作品。这些作品是值得翻译的。而且我仍然希望将来会有更多高质量的文学作品，这当然需要向外国文学学习（就像莫言向其他诺贝尔奖作品学习一样），而且作者需要能够说几种语言，走遍世界。我相信，在未来的中国，作者将能够再次自由写作，从而恢复到唐代和20世纪20年代产生的顶级文学作品的质量。 | ||
| + | Modern literature in China created simply some of the best works of literature in the world. Of course the quality deteriorated, when literature took the path of engaged literature in 1927. But before that was a time of experiments, iconoclasm, Zero-point-literature (the Chinese May Fourth literature has parallels to the German literature after World War II), and Breakup. | ||
| + | 中国的现代文学创造了一些世界上最好的文学作品。当然，当文学在1927年走上“方向文学”的道路后，整体质量下滑。但在此之前，中国文学具有百废俱兴的特点（中国的五四文学与二战后的德国文学有相似之处），是一个破旧立新的新时代。 | ||
| + | 5 If the popular modern Chinese literature is a history of modern China, what do you think are the characteristics of contemporary Chinese literature?[edit] | ||
| + | In the meantime, master narrators tell us certain decades of Chinese history, Lao She's Tea House, Ba Jin's Family, Qian Zhongshu's Weicheng, Mao Dun's Ziye, Mo Yan's Life and Death are wearing me out, and in newer times Xu Zechen describes life in Haidian since the 1980's, Zhang Jie's Heavy Wings and Yu Hua's "Brothers" explain both sides of the medal of the Reform and Opening Policy. | ||
| + | 在此期间，大师级的叙述者告诉我们关于中国历史的某些年代，老舍的《茶馆》、巴金的《家》、钱钟书的《围城》、茅盾的《子夜》、莫言的《生死疲劳》，而在较近的时代，徐则臣描述了80年代以后的海淀生活，张洁的《沉重的翅膀》和余华的《兄弟》解释了改革开放政策的两面。 | ||
| + | Contemporary literature is documenting and presenting contemporay Chinese society. We lack the distance of time to evaluate what works of contemporary literature will be regarded as representative for today. Mandarin duck and butterfly literature (鸳鸯蝴蝶派) was the mainstream literature of the 1920s, but today we remember the rebellious baihua literature as being representative of that time. | ||
| + | 当代文学是记录和呈现当代中国社会的。我们缺乏时间的距离来评估哪些当代文学作品会被认为是今天的代表。鸳鸯蝴蝶派是20世纪20年代的主流文学，但今天我们记住了叛逆的白话文是那个时代的代表。 | ||
| + | So the literature appears more diverse today. However, reality itself appears also more diverse today, with people living next door without knowing each other, with people living in filter bubbles and losing the ability to judge what is real and what is fake, to listen, to discuss and to revise their own opinions. | ||
| + | 因此，今天的文学显得更加多样化。然而，现实本身在今天也显得更加多样化，人们住在隔壁，却互不相识，人们生活在过滤的泡沫中，失去了判断什么是真实和虚假的能力，失去了倾听、讨论和修正自己意见的能力。 | ||
| + | Contemporary Chinese literature produces heros, we need more tragic heros. It follows the paths of affirmative, system stabilizing narratives. It misses alternative narratives, the voice of authoritative critical authors like Guenther Grass in Germany, which also in China was the original role of authors for millenia, but these authors are silent in today's China or have emigrated. According to statistics, Chinese are the most intelligent ethnicity in the world. So they should be generous enough to allow different voices according to the Chinese tradition of "harmonic but of a different opinion" (和而不同). | ||
| + | 当代中国文学产生了英雄，我们需要更多的悲剧式英雄。它遵循着积极且中庸的叙述方式。它错过了替代性叙事，错过了像德国的君特·格拉斯（Guenther Grass）这样的权威批评家的声音，这在中国也是几千年来作家的原本角色，但这些作家在今天的中国都沉默了，或者已经移民了。据统计，中国人是世界上最聪明的民族。所以他们应该有足够的胸怀，根据中国 "和而不同 "的传统，允许不同的声音。 | ||
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| + | 6 In your opinion, what are the reasons why contemporary works do not attract overseas audiences as much as they did in the past? Is there a gap between them and the classical Chinese literature?[edit] | ||
| + | The main difference between contemporary and modern Chinese authors is, that the contemporary ones do not read foreign literature on a daily basis, also because they don't know foreign languages any more. Mo Yan, who won the Nobel Prize, has done so, although he read other works which have won the Nobel Prize of literature in Chinese translation. | ||
| + | 中国当代作家和现代作家之间的主要区别是，当代作家并不每天阅读外国文学作品，有部分的原因是他们不懂外语。获得诺贝尔奖的莫言就是这样的，尽管他阅读了其他获得诺贝尔文学奖的中译本作品。 | ||
| + | The main difference between classical authors and contemporary authors is, that contemporary authors are not trained all their life in letters. They do not work hard for several years to pass the Keju. Instead, they are silenced by the banalities of the everyday, they think about buying a flat etc. And of course they cannot be such free thinkers as their counterparts in ancient times, because they live in an extremely regulated, maybe even overregulated and short-living society. They also have less common ground, because the filter bubbles of different countries differ and even the filter bubbles within China. | ||
| + | 古典作家与当代作家的主要区别在于，当代作家并非一生都在接受文学训练。他们不会为了通过科举考试而努力工作数年。相反，他们被日常的平淡生活所压抑，他们考虑的是买房子等等。当然，他们也不可能像古代的文人墨客那样成为自由的思想家，因为他们生活在一个极其规范，甚至可能是过度规范的社会，加上科技的便利，此时的文学作品多多少少有着昙花一现的危险。他们的共同点也比较少，因为不同国家的过滤泡沫不同，甚至中国内部的过滤泡沫也不同。 | ||
| + | The best of ancient Chinese literature, especially Tang poetry, is of timeless value, their authors have earned a place in eternity. The artistic transformation process was extremely long in ancient times, today authors may record their half-cooked thoughts by voice recorder and publish them online before they have finished their stumblings. | ||
| + | 中国古代文学的精华，尤其是唐诗，具有永恒的价值，它们的作者已经赢得了永恒的地位。在古代，艺术转化的过程是极其漫长的，今天的作者可能用录音机记录下他们半生不熟的想法，在他们磕磕绊绊的完成之前就在网上发表。 | ||
| + | Apart from the well-known works of Lu Xun and Yu Qiuyu, do you have any criteria for selecting modern works for translation?[edit] | ||
| + | The most important reason to me is, if a story grabs me, and may also grab the readers of my target culture. Let me explain this with the following examples: | ||
| + | 对我来说，最重要的原因是，如果一个故事抓住了我，也可能抓住我的目标文化的读者。让我用下面的例子来解释。 | ||
| + | To see Cheng Tiansong grow up in the bank business and finally reading of his heroic and creative symbolic protest against foreign tea traders, when he dumped tea leaves into the Huangpu river is simply a joy to read in Ji Yu's Die Clans von Xin'an. | ||
| + | 看到程天送自小在银行业的环境下长大，最后读到他将茶叶倒入黄浦江，对外国茶商进行英雄式的、创造性的象征性抗议，这和在季宇的《新安家族》中简直是同一种阅读的乐趣。 | ||
| + | In Han Shaogong's collection of short stories Fading moon over the abandoned courtyard, we read through the eyes of different people. Impressive is the perspective of a person reading water meters in a house and explaining that in flat no. 5 a grandmother lived with her child and both died one after the other. Starting from the gap in the list of meter figures, the narrator explains that the flat is not rented out again because people fear the ghosts of the two women. The narrator describes, how he remembers the steps of the girl when she came home every night and writes: "Since these steps disappeared, I looked out of the window into the quiet night to the moon. It was as if something was missing in the night." Descriptions like this last in the mind of the readers. | ||
| + | 在韩少功的短篇小说集中，我们通过不同人的眼睛来阅读《空院残月》。令人印象深刻的是一个人在房子里读水表，并解释说在5号公寓里，一位奶奶和她的孩子住在一起，两人相继去世。对于水表刻度上的空白，叙述者解释说，由于人们害怕这两个女人的鬼魂，所以该公寓没有再租出去。叙述者描述了他如何记住女孩每天晚上回家时的台阶，并写道："一旦消失，夜深人静之时，我仰望泼入窗口的银月，会觉得夜晚缺失了什么"，像这样的描述在读者心中经久不衰。 | ||
| + | Sometimes a story also touches me because it describes scenes familiar to me. The life of students and young graduates on and around the campus of Peking University described by Xu Zechen in Ah Beijing! matches my memories. The cohabiting of young people, the complex relations, work as cook and being a rebel poet, all of these seemingly weird constellations create a lively portray of Peking University campus. Therefore even readers who have never been there can feel the atmosphere there. | ||
| + | 有时一个故事也会打动我，因为它描述了我熟悉的场景。徐则臣在《啊北京！》中描述的北京大学校园内外的学生和年轻毕业生的生活与我的记忆相吻合。故事里面，年轻人复杂的同居和三角恋爱关系，心怀诗人梦想的厨师等等，所有这些不易理解、似爱非爱的复杂情感关系构建了一幅幅生动的“北漂”形象。因此，即使没有去过那里的读者也能感受到那里的气氛。 | ||
| + | Zhang Wei is a master of dense atmosphere and magic-realistic description of nature. In his story Sea wind, published in the collection of short stories of the same title, the reader only from sudden appearance of certain characters (thin children with large stomachs etc.) realizes, that the country must be in a famine and that the protagonists of the story, who are experts in getting fish out of the sea and creating delicious fish soup, actually are the salvation for the people living further inland, who finally also come to the shore and are saved. | ||
| + | 张炜是描绘浓郁气氛和神奇自然的大师。在他发表于同名短篇小说集的故事《海边的风》中，读者仅从某些人物（例如：瘦弱的孩子有着大肚腩等）的突然出现就意识到，这个国家一定处于饥荒之中，故事中的主人公是从海里捞鱼和制作美味鱼汤的专家，他们实际上是对生活在内陆的人们的拯救，他们最终也来到了岸上，并得到了拯救。 | ||
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| + | 8 As you mentioned, the "exoticism" of a translated work is one of the reasons that attracts foreign readers to read it. Which other reasons are there? (For example, is the historical context of a novel also a reason?)[edit] | ||
| + | Curiosity is a common characteristic of readers all around the world. To discover something new or to experience it immersively, for example to dive into a different place and different time, is attractive. Places and times, which bear mystery, are attractive because of their exoticism. Places and times you adore are also attractive. These can be historical turning points or simply a country you like. China still has a long way to win the hearts of people around the world, but it will be successful the freer and the cleaner it becomes. China may revive their ancient virtues like to base things on merits, to consider criticism as constructive, to admit if one was wrong in ones history, to help the poor, the disadvantaged and the minorities, to put ones own language, culture and nation last, and to be humble. But when it will be successful, then there actually may come a new time of "Chinoiserie", where people in the world simply want to read more Chinese literature, because everything which is Chinese is considered "fancy". | ||
| + | 好奇心是全世界读者的共同特征。“发现新大陆”或身临其境的阅读体验，好似进入一个全新时空，读者被其深深吸引。带有神秘感的地方和时间，因其异国情调而具有吸引力。你崇拜的地方和时间也是有吸引力的。这些可以是历史的转折点，也可以只是你喜欢的国家。中国要赢得全世界人民的心，还有很长的路要走，但它越是自由，越是干净，就会越成功。中国可能会恢复其古老的美德，如以事实为依据，将批评视为建设性的，承认自己在历史上的错误，帮助穷人、弱势群体和少数民族，将自己的语言、文化和民族放在最后，并保持谦逊。但是当它成功的时候，实际上可能会出现一个新的 "中国化 "的时代，世界上的人们只是想读更多的中国文学，因为所有中国的东西都被认为是 "花哨的"。 | ||
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| + | 9 After so many years of comparative research, what do you think are the differences and commonalities between the concerns of Chinese and Western literature?[edit] | ||
| + | The main difference is that Western literature is almost not restricted. Therefore Chinese Writers have a less fortunate starting point. Therefore it is even more remarkable if they produce a few pieces at the level of world literature. | ||
| + | 主要的区别是，西方文学几乎没有限制。因此，中国作家的起点就不那么幸运了。因此，如果他们能写出几篇达到世界文学水平的作品，那就更了不起了。 | ||
| + | Another main difference is that in Western literature, originality and creativity is appreciated more than rafinesse in expression. | ||
| + | 另一个主要区别是，在西方文学中，人们对原创性和创造性的赞赏多于对精致的表达方式的肯定。 | ||
| + | If in Western literature governments or politics are mentioned, they are mostly mentioned in a negative way or criticized. In Chinese literature, the only criticism of governments you find is the one of foreign governments. This makes is sometimes impossible for a Western reader to continue reading, because the constant praise, especially in the category of propaganda literature, scares readers off. | ||
| + | 如果在西方文学中提到政府或政治，它们大多是以负面的方式被提及或被批评。在中国文学中，你能找到的对政府的批评只有对外国政府的批评。这使得西方读者有时无法继续阅读，因为不断的赞美，尤其是在宣传文学的范畴内，会吓跑读者。 | ||
| + | Literature first of all is a way of human communication which bridges time, space and minds. The nation becomes less and less important as a category of literature. Today we have Chinese writers who write in Chinese in America or in English. We have 100 million people worldwide who learn Chinese and who may read the one or other piece of Chinese literature in its original language. | ||
| + | 文学首先是人类交流的一种方式，它连接着时间、空间和思想。作为文学的一个类别，民族变得越来越不重要。今天，我们有中国作家在美国用中文或英文写作。我们在全世界有一亿人在学习中文，他们可能会用原文阅读一篇或另一篇中国文学作品。 | ||
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| + | 10 Literature is an important point of cultural exchange. Is it possible to break down the perceived bias between East and West through literary translation?[edit] | ||
| + | Literature is also an important point of exchange of lives. When you dive deep into a piece of Chinese literature, you even switch lifes with a Chinese protagonist. What is a better way to overcome prejudices than to be a part of another society and culture? | ||
| + | 文学也是生命交流的一个重要节点。当你深入到一部中国文学作品中时，你甚至会和中国的主人公交换生命。有什么比成为另一个社会和文化的一部分更能克服偏见的方法呢？ | ||
| + | Not everybody has the means and time to travel to understand different cultures. Especially during the pandemic, we can instead watch a documentary or take a book. | ||
| + | 不是每个人都有能力和时间去旅行，了解不同的文化。特别是在新冠疫情期间，我们反而可以看一部纪录片或拿一本书。 | ||
| + | In Europe, we have discovered that when there are no borders between countries who have fought each other as enemies in the second world war, that French people are almost totally like Germans etc. If no education tells you that you are different, you start from the common things. From the space, the earth seems one, with no borders. According to statistics, Chinese people are the most intelligent people on earth. From concepts of harmony, datong and the Chinese 56 ethnicities all united in the Chinese citizens, Chinese deeply feel, that Tibetans, Uighurs, people from Hong Kong, Taiwan and even oversea's Chinese in Singapore and the United States all are equal and earn dignity. And in this, they are equal with the ethnicities along the Belt and Road initiative and with all the different ethnicities around the world. Many people in the world expect China to be the new leader of the world. The world's eyes are on China now, how China treats its ethnicities and how it realizes the concepts of "he er bu tong". | ||
| + | 在欧洲，我们发现，当那些在第二次世界大战中作为敌人互相厮杀的国家之间没有边界时，法国人几乎完全像德国人等等。如果没有教育告诉你，你是不同的，你就会从共同的东西开始。从太空中看，地球似乎是一个整体，没有边界。据统计，中国人是地球上最聪明的人。从和谐的概念来看，大同和中国56个民族都团结在一起成为中国公民是一样的道理，中国人深深感到，西藏人、维吾尔人、香港人、台湾人，甚至新加坡和美国的海外华人都是平等的，都有尊严。在这一点上，他们与 "一带一路 "倡议沿线的民族以及世界各地的所有不同民族是平等的。世界上许多人期望中国成为世界的新领袖。世界的目光现在都在关注中国，关注中国如何对待其各民族，如何实现 "和而不同 "的理念。 | ||
| + | I don't think that ordinary people have prejudices from the very beginning. When children grow up, they don't differentiate, classify and stigmatize. You can see that with the gender roles. If you dress a girl as a boy, people will play with her as with a boy, play soccer and give her car toys to play. If you explain to them that it was a girl, they apologize. | ||
| + | 我不认为普通人从一开始就有偏见。在孩童时代，他们不会进行区分、分类和污名化。你可以从性别角色中看到这一点。如果你把一个女孩打扮成男孩，人们会像对待男孩一样和她玩，踢足球，给她汽车玩具玩。如果你向他们解释那是个女孩，他们会道歉。 | ||
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| + | =Notes= | ||
==1 在翻译一部本土化气息特别浓的小说前，是否会到当地进行走访呢？== | ==1 在翻译一部本土化气息特别浓的小说前，是否会到当地进行走访呢？== | ||
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| − | + | ===1 Do you visit the local area before translating a novel that is particularly localized?=== | |
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| + | Although there are also good translations of translators who have not visited the original sites, I think it is very important that the translator deeply immerses into the social-historical situation of the original. I met Jia Pingwa in Xi'an and he showed me his home full of regional artefacts like wooden masks and explained the regional cultural roots of these artefacts to me. I have also heard from a lot of Chinese colleagues, who study foreign authors, that they visit the places of their works and their graves to get an impression of the atmosphere. A lot of actors dive into the life of the historical characters they are acting. | ||
| + | 虽然不可否认，仍然有不少优秀的翻译作品，其译者没有机会走访作品的发生地，但是我自己认为，走访作品发生地是十分重要的，这样译者可以深深的沉浸在原作所处的社会和历史环境中。我在西安与贾平凹见面， | ||
| + | I personally have spent as much time as I could on the traces of Cao Xueqin since when I was a student at Peking University. Very helpful were the Red Chamber Research Institute (中国艺术研究院红楼梦研究所), where I got the present of the Hongloumeng Dictionary 《红楼梦大辞典》, the Cao Xueqin Remembrance Site (曹雪芹纪念馆) at the foot of the Xiangshan, I have visted the reconstructed Daguanyuan (北京大观园), and the Gugong (故宫), have eaten some of the dishes presented in the novel and spent some time time in Nanking. The most I have learned from the diverse research literature in China and abroad and from attending Redology conferences in China, where the newest research results were presented by colleagues. I have read more about what was life like in the times of Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong and about Manchu culture, the Banner system. However, the main task is to take the readers by the hand and abduct to China 250 years back in time and to make the bustling life of that time become alive again. To bring the novel into today's world, I also participated in a project to recreate the novel in the form of a D Book, which is a pocket size book adding songs and video clips to the novel text with QR codes, visible on smart devices and also on Google glasses, one of the most successful items at the Frankfurt book fair. In this way, we could also win younger readers in Germany to read this Chinese classic. | ||
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| + | I have done so similarly with Mian Mian's novel Panda Sex, I visited her in Shanghai and she showed me all the places who appear in the novel. What I found out there was, that the novel was actually a recording of her life. Similarly, I met Wang Meng on December 2, 1992 and several times later in Germany and at Harvard University. On May 25, 2009, I spoke with Han Han on the phone, I read his blogs, watched his films and TV series, when I translated three of his novels. I also introduced Han Han's interview to the German readers in the most important German newspaper. On September 12, 2009, I met Mo Yan in Frankfurt three years before he was awarded the Nobel Prize. I published an interview with him and introduced him more to German readers. All of these and was a small mosaic part of his promotion to be awarded the prize. I met Yu Hua in Beijing and was impressed, that this great author treated his translators without any airs and graces, but as equals. | ||
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| + | ===1 Besuchen Sie die lokale Umgebung, bevor Sie einen Roman übersetzen, der besonders lokalisiert ist?=== | ||
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| + | Obwohl es auch gute Übersetzungen von Übersetzern gibt, die die Originalschauplätze nicht besucht haben, halte ich es für sehr wichtig, dass der Übersetzer tief in die sozialgeschichtliche Situation des Originals eintaucht. Ich traf Jia Pingwa in Xi'an und er zeigte mir sein Haus voller regionaler Artefakte wie Holzmasken und erklärte mir die regionalen kulturellen Wurzeln dieser Artefakte. Ich habe auch von vielen chinesischen Kollegen, die sich mit ausländischen Autoren beschäftigen, gehört, dass sie die Orte ihrer Werke und ihre Gräber besuchen, um einen Eindruck von der Atmosphäre zu bekommen. Viele Schauspieler tauchen in das Leben der historischen Figuren ein, die sie spielen. | ||
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| + | Ich persönlich habe so viel Zeit wie möglich auf den Spuren von Cao Xueqin verbracht, seit ich Student an der Universität Peking war. Sehr hilfreich war dabei das Red Chamber Research Institute (中国艺术研究院红楼梦研究所), wo ich das Hongloumeng-Wörterbuch 《红楼梦大辞典》 geschenkt bekam, die Cao Xueqin-Gedenkstätte (曹雪芹纪念馆) am Fuße des Xiangshan, Ich habe das rekonstruierte Daguanyuan (北京大观园) und das Gugong (故宫) besichtigt, einige der im Roman vorgestellten Gerichte gegessen und einige Zeit in Nanking verbracht. Das meiste habe ich aus der vielfältigen Forschungsliteratur in China und im Ausland gelernt und aus der Teilnahme an Redology-Konferenzen in China, wo die neuesten Forschungsergebnisse von Kollegen vorgestellt wurden. Ich habe mehr darüber gelesen, wie das Leben zu Zeiten von Kangxi, Yongzheng und Qianlong aussah und über die Mandschu-Kultur, das Bannersystem. Die Hauptaufgabe besteht jedoch darin, die Leser an die Hand zu nehmen und nach China zu entführen, 250 Jahre zurück in die Vergangenheit, und das pulsierende Leben von damals wieder lebendig werden zu lassen. Um den Roman in die heutige Welt zu bringen, habe ich auch an einem Projekt teilgenommen, bei dem der Roman in Form eines D-Books neu aufgelegt wurde, einem Buch im Taschenformat, das den Text des Romans mit Liedern und Videoclips ergänzt und mit QR-Codes versehen ist, die auf Smart-Devices und auch auf Google-Brillen sichtbar sind, einem der erfolgreichsten Artikel auf der Frankfurter Buchmesse. Auf diese Weise konnten wir auch jüngere Leser in Deutschland für diesen chinesischen Klassiker gewinnen. | ||
| − | + | Ähnlich habe ich es mit Mian Mians Roman Panda Sex gemacht, ich habe sie in Shanghai besucht und sie hat mir alle Orte gezeigt, die in dem Roman vorkommen. Dabei habe ich herausgefunden, dass der Roman eigentlich eine Aufzeichnung ihres Lebens ist. In ähnlicher Weise traf ich Wang Meng am 2. Dezember 1992 und später mehrmals in Deutschland und an der Harvard University. Am 25. Mai 2009 habe ich mit Han Han telefoniert, seine Blogs gelesen, seine Filme und Fernsehserien gesehen und drei seiner Romane übersetzt. Außerdem habe ich den deutschen Lesern ein Interview mit Han Han in der wichtigsten deutschen Zeitung vorgestellt. Am 12. September 2009 traf ich Mo Yan in Frankfurt, drei Jahre bevor er den Nobelpreis erhielt. Ich habe ein Interview mit ihm veröffentlicht und ihn den deutschen Lesern näher vorgestellt. All das war ein kleiner Mosaikstein in seiner Werbung für die Verleihung des Preises. Ich habe Yu Hua in Peking getroffen und war beeindruckt, dass dieser große Autor seine Übersetzer ohne Starallüren, sondern auf Augenhöhe behandelt. | |
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==2 能否拿《红楼梦》举例，在翻译中国古代作品的时候，如何尽可能的避免翻译里面带来的文化空白问题？== | ==2 能否拿《红楼梦》举例，在翻译中国古代作品的时候，如何尽可能的避免翻译里面带来的文化空白问题？== | ||
| − | Can you take the example of the Dream of the Red Chamber: How to avoid cultural gaps in the translation of ancient Chinese works? | + | ===Can you take the example of the Dream of the Red Chamber: How to avoid cultural gaps in the translation of ancient Chinese works?=== |
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| + | There are gaps in time and space. When Jia Baoyu addresses his grandmother, he does not call her "grandma", but "Jia Mu", the same with his father, mother, cousins etc., which are addressed with their absolute, not relative position, like "third master" etc. This is common 250 years ago in China, and it was common 250 years ago in Europe. So it is more a gap in time than in culture. Therefore, if the translator decides to follow a communicative strategy, he may turn it into the direct form "grandma, father, mother" to make the text better understandable (localization). If one values the authenticity of the original and the last manuscript version of the author before publication, one can keep the original indirect addressing, making the text sound more distant and formal (foreignization) to today's readers. | ||
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| + | The language in the Red Chamber Dreams is more indirect, sexuality is mostly described with "the play of clouds and rain". Minford has solved that problem by describing two scenes in more detail than they are described in the original. | ||
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| + | Even the plants described in the novel are not so common in Europe. In Europe, the trees who keep their needle like green leaves even during the winter, are "conifers", with the "pine" as the most common sort. In China, the "Platycladus Orientalis", is seen most often. Both trees belong to the "coniferous" trees, the most obvious difference is that the leaves are thin almost like needles in Europe, but larger in China. However, when translating the conifer (柏) with "Platycladus Orientalis", European readers will always think of an exotic environment. This translation strategy is called "foreignization". In the original, mentioning the "conifer" was mainly to create an impression of ever green trees common in Qing China. Therefore, it is considerable to translate "柏", "柏树", "松柏树" with "conifer", a strategy called "localization". This makes sure that the European reader is not mislead and does not pay attention to unwanted details, but can follow the story line. | ||
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| + | However, the "localization" of the law enforcement troops in the novel, who confiscate the Jia's families fortune and capture family members, fulfill functions like todays police in the West. However, to translate the law enforcement troops with "police" may astonish the readers at that place in the story, because it sounds modern. Therefore, the more foreignizing, even exoticizing term "gold jackets" may appear more appropriate. These kinds of choices have constantly to be made in the translation process and everybody may have a different opinion, what choices are the most appropriate, however, nobody frees the translator from the burden to make the choices. Important is, that a translator should never stick to his first choice for all of the different revised editions during his or her lifetime. A translator should always be open to suggestions from colleagues, Redology experts and readers. Therefore, to translate a word in one way may be a good choice in the 2000's and to translate it differently may be a good choice in the 2020's. It also depends on the targeted readers and what impression one wants to leave on them. If the targeted readers are Redologists, one can stick more to the original and give less explanations (foreignization), if the targeted readers are the masses, one may be freer and bring the text closer to the readers (localization). | ||
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| + | ===Können Sie das Beispiel des Traums von der Roten Kammer nehmen: Wie lassen sich kulturelle Lücken bei der Übersetzung alter chinesischer Werke vermeiden?=== | ||
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| + | Es gibt Lücken in Zeit und Raum. Wenn Jia Baoyu seine Großmutter anspricht, nennt er sie nicht "Großmutter", sondern "Jia Mu", dasselbe gilt für seinen Vater, seine Mutter, seine Cousins usw., die mit ihrer absoluten, nicht relativen Position angesprochen werden, wie "dritter Meister" usw. Dies war vor 250 Jahren in China üblich, und es war auch vor 250 Jahren in Europa üblich. Es handelt sich also eher um eine zeitliche als um eine kulturelle Lücke. Wenn sich der Übersetzer also für eine kommunikative Strategie entscheidet, kann er es in die direkte Form "Oma, Vater, Mutter" umwandeln, um den Text besser verständlich zu machen (Lokalisierung). Legt man Wert auf die Authentizität des Originals und der letzten Manuskriptversion des Autors vor der Veröffentlichung, kann man die ursprüngliche indirekte Anrede beibehalten, wodurch der Text für heutige Leser distanzierter und förmlicher klingt (Verfremdung). | ||
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| + | Die Sprache in den Red Chamber Dreams ist indirekter, Sexualität wird meist mit dem "Spiel von Wolken und Regen" beschrieben. Minford hat dieses Problem gelöst, indem er zwei Szenen ausführlicher als im Original beschrieben hat. | ||
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| + | Auch die im Roman beschriebenen Pflanzen sind in Europa nicht so verbreitet. In Europa sind die Bäume, die ihre nadelartigen grünen Blätter auch im Winter behalten, "Nadelbäume", wobei die "Kiefer" die häufigste Art ist. In China ist der "Platycladus Orientalis" am häufigsten anzutreffen. Beide Bäume gehören zu den "Nadelbäumen", der offensichtlichste Unterschied ist, dass die Blätter in Europa dünn, fast wie Nadeln sind, in China jedoch größer. Bei der Übersetzung des Nadelbaums (柏) mit "Platycladus Orientalis" werden europäische Leser jedoch immer an eine exotische Umgebung denken. Diese Übersetzungsstrategie wird als "Verfremdung" bezeichnet. Im Original diente die Erwähnung der "Konifere" hauptsächlich dazu, den Eindruck von immergrünen Bäumen zu erwecken, die im China der Qing-Zeit üblich waren. Daher ist es sinnvoll, "柏", "柏树", "松柏树" mit "Nadelbaum" zu übersetzen, eine Strategie, die "Lokalisierung" genannt wird. Dadurch wird sichergestellt, dass der europäische Leser nicht in die Irre geführt wird und nicht auf unerwünschte Details achtet, sondern der Handlung folgen kann. | ||
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| + | Die "Lokalisierung" der Ordnungskräfte im Roman, die das Vermögen der Familie Jia konfiszieren und Familienmitglieder gefangen nehmen, erfüllt jedoch die Funktionen der heutigen Polizei im Westen. Die Gesetzeshüter mit "Polizei" zu übersetzen, könnte jedoch die Leser an dieser Stelle der Geschichte verwundern, weil es modern klingt. Daher erscheint der eher verfremdende, ja exotisierende Begriff "Goldjacken" vielleicht angemessener. Solche Entscheidungen müssen im Übersetzungsprozess immer wieder getroffen werden, und jeder mag eine andere Meinung darüber haben, welche Wahl die geeignetste ist, aber niemand entbindet den Übersetzer von der Pflicht, diese Entscheidungen zu treffen. Wichtig ist, dass ein Übersetzer nie bei seiner ersten Wahl für alle verschiedenen überarbeiteten Ausgaben seines Lebens bleiben sollte. Ein Übersetzer sollte immer offen für Vorschläge von Kollegen, Redologieexperten und Lesern sein. Daher kann es in den 2000er Jahren eine gute Wahl sein, ein Wort auf eine bestimmte Weise zu übersetzen, und in den 2020er Jahren kann es eine gute Wahl sein, es anders zu übersetzen. Es hängt auch davon ab, an welche Leser man sich wendet und welchen Eindruck man bei ihnen hinterlassen möchte. Handelt es sich bei der Zielgruppe um Redologen, kann man sich mehr an das Original halten und weniger Erklärungen geben (Fremdsprachigkeit), handelt es sich bei der Zielgruppe um die breite Masse, kann man freier sein und den Text den Lesern näher bringen (Lokalisierung). | ||
==3 在翻译中遇到的最麻烦的翻译问题会是哪一类？是由于什么方面的文化差异造成的呢？== | ==3 在翻译中遇到的最麻烦的翻译问题会是哪一类？是由于什么方面的文化差异造成的呢？== | ||
| − | What are the most troublesome translation problems encountered in translation? What are the cultural differences that cause them? | + | Culture-loaded words 文化负载词 |
| + | 饮食、服装、迷信相关的词句 | ||
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| + | 中西文化各方面的差异 | ||
| + | ===3 What are the most troublesome translation problems encountered in translation? What are the cultural differences that cause them=== | ||
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| + | Like escimos, who have several terms to describe "snow", there are some terms in Chinese who have more terms in Western languages so that the translator needs to decide. One of the more difficult tasks was that the term "姑娘", which is used not only by masters addressing their offspring, but also addressing their servants and even by the servants addressing female masters, like Lin Daiyu (e.g. chapter 82). So it needs to be translated into "Master", "daughter", "Miss" depending on who is using it to address whom. Sometimes one term in Chinese describes several different things in Western languages, so you have to decide as translators. | ||
| + | Most troublesome is background knowledge of Chinese readers, especially with parts of Chinese characters referred to, motifs in poems, which refer back to a whole cosmos of earlier poems and stories they evoke in the Chinese readers minds. When Lin Daiyu quotes verses from the "West Chamber", Jia Baoyu immediately knows that she is in love with him. These subtle things need to be expressed between the lines, without that the Western readers know the "Romance of the Western Chamber". | ||
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| + | Here are some examples, where further explanations in the text or annotations are helpful: In chapter 92, Baoyu mentions several historical female figures familiar to the Chinese reader, but not to the Western: "[...]班婕妤、蔡文姬、谢道韫诸人。" This became a very long translation in German: "die belesene Konkubine des Herrschers Tscheng-di von Han Ban Djie-yü und die zwei Dichterinnen Tsai Wën-dji und Hsie Dau-yün". | ||
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| + | Troublesome are also culture-loaded words, like when names for Chinese clothing, Chinese dishes and customs are mentioned. Some of these terms are not totally clear even for Chinese readers. In these cases, the translation needs to give more explanations in order to keep the focus of the reader on the story and not to distract them with things, which were not intended to distract the original readers. Also superstitious beliefs (迷信) are mentioned at several places in the novel. Sometimes we have "false friends", e.g. when a witch is sticking needles into puppets. This is familiar to us with the witches tradition and the Woodoo cult. However, we can not simply use the familiar Western terms for it, because these cultural parallels have their local genuine traditions and may have developed independently from another or there have been some kind of cultural exchanges. In any case it is important to make differences clear and not to make the reader mix up things. Also that Jia Zheng in chapter 120 is not recognizing his son Jia Baoyu, who is somehow leaving the earthly world, is parallel to stories familiar to Western readers from the bible. However, even these paralells earn an appropriate translation in their local tradition and context to raise awareness for cultural traditions. | ||
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| + | At one time, the clothes of the Prince of Beijing are referred to as wearing the 江牙海水五爪龙 pattern. Without explanations, Western readers may not know that the expression is colloquial for the pattern 海水江崖纹, which displays five claw dragons above troubled river water, and that this pattern was reserved for the emperor or the imperial family. Therefore mentioning this pattern detail of his clothes supports the high position and authority of the Prince of Beijing. A lot of clothes are described and many of them mix Manchu and Han culture, even Western materials and influences can be found. Many of the cultural items described in the novel are not genuinely Chinese, but found their present appearance through mixing and mingling. Cao Xueqin plays with the different cultures and even reduces hints to set his novel in Qing Dynasty. This is not only a way to create a timeless novel of eternal value, it shows the intercultural attitude and tolerancce of Cao Xueqin. Also within the Chinese culture, he was engaged to help the poor and the weak. This is a Chinese value, but it is also a common international value of human civilization throughout cultures. | ||
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| + | ===3 Was sind die lästigsten Probleme bei der Übersetzung? Was sind die kulturellen Unterschiede, die sie verursachen=== | ||
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| + | Wie bei den Eskimos, für die es mehrere Begriffe zur Beschreibung von "Schnee" gibt, gibt es im Chinesischen einige Begriffe, für die es in westlichen Sprachen mehrere Begriffe gibt, so dass der Übersetzer eine Entscheidung treffen muss. Eine der schwierigeren Aufgaben war der Begriff "姑娘", der nicht nur von Herren verwendet wird, die ihre Nachkommen ansprechen, sondern auch von ihren Dienern und sogar von den Dienern, die weibliche Herren ansprechen, wie Lin Daiyu (z. B. Kapitel 82). Es muss also mit "Meister", "Tochter" oder "Fräulein" übersetzt werden, je nachdem, wer wen damit anspricht. Manchmal beschreibt ein Begriff im Chinesischen mehrere verschiedene Dinge in westlichen Sprachen, so dass Sie als Übersetzer entscheiden müssen. | ||
| + | Am problematischsten ist das Hintergrundwissen der chinesischen Leser, vor allem, wenn auf Teile chinesischer Schriftzeichen Bezug genommen wird, auf Motive in Gedichten, die auf einen ganzen Kosmos früherer Gedichte und Geschichten verweisen, die sie in den Köpfen der chinesischen Leser hervorrufen. Wenn Lin Daiyu Verse aus der "Westkammer" zitiert, weiß Jia Baoyu sofort, dass sie in ihn verliebt ist. Diese subtilen Dinge müssen zwischen den Zeilen ausgedrückt werden, ohne dass die westlichen Leser die "Romanze der Westlichen Kammer" kennen. | ||
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| + | Hier sind einige Beispiele, bei denen weitere Erklärungen im Text oder Anmerkungen hilfreich sind: In Kapitel 92 erwähnt Baoyu mehrere historische Frauenfiguren, die dem chinesischen Leser bekannt sind, dem westlichen aber nicht: "[...]班婕妤、蔡文姬、谢道韫诸人。" Daraus wurde eine sehr lange Übersetzung ins Deutsche: "die belesene Konkubine des Herrschers Tscheng-di von Han Ban Djie-yü und die zwei Dichterinnen Tsai Wën-dji und Hsie Dau-yün". | ||
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| + | Problematisch sind auch kulturell aufgeladene Wörter, etwa wenn Namen für chinesische Kleidung, chinesische Gerichte und Bräuche genannt werden. Einige dieser Begriffe sind selbst für chinesische Leser nicht ganz klar. In diesen Fällen muss die Übersetzung mehr Erklärungen geben, um den Fokus des Lesers auf der Geschichte zu halten und ihn nicht mit Dingen abzulenken, die den ursprünglichen Leser nicht ablenken sollten. Auch abergläubischer Glaube (迷信) wird an mehreren Stellen des Romans erwähnt. Manchmal haben wir "falsche Freunde", z. B. wenn eine Hexe Nadeln in Puppen sticht. Das ist uns aus der Hexentradition und dem Woodoo-Kult vertraut. Wir können jedoch nicht einfach die vertrauten westlichen Begriffe dafür verwenden, denn diese kulturellen Parallelen haben ihre eigenen authentischen Traditionen und können sich unabhängig voneinander entwickelt haben oder es gab eine Art kulturellen Austausch. In jedem Fall ist es wichtig, die Unterschiede deutlich zu machen und den Leser nicht zu verwechseln. Auch dass Jia Zheng in Kapitel 120 seinen Sohn Jia Baoyu nicht erkennt, der irgendwie die irdische Welt verlässt, ist eine Parallele zu Geschichten, die dem westlichen Leser aus der Bibel bekannt sind. Aber auch diese Parallelen verdienen eine angemessene Übersetzung in ihrer lokalen Tradition und ihrem Kontext, um das Bewusstsein für kulturelle Traditionen zu schärfen. | ||
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| + | So wird die Kleidung des Prinzen von Peking einmal als 江牙海水五爪龙-Muster bezeichnet. Ohne Erklärungen wissen westliche Leser vielleicht nicht, dass der Ausdruck umgangssprachlich für das Muster 海水江崖纹 steht, das fünf Krallendrachen über unruhigem Flusswasser zeigt, und dass dieses Muster dem Kaiser oder der kaiserlichen Familie vorbehalten war. Die Erwähnung dieses Musters an seiner Kleidung unterstreicht daher die hohe Stellung und Autorität des Prinzen von Peking. Es wird eine Vielzahl von Kleidungsstücken beschrieben, und viele von ihnen sind eine Mischung aus Mandschu- und Han-Kultur, sogar westliche Materialien und Einflüsse sind zu finden. Viele der im Roman beschriebenen Kulturgüter sind keine echten Chinesen, sondern haben ihr heutiges Aussehen durch Vermischung und Vermengung erhalten. Cao Xueqin spielt mit den verschiedenen Kulturen und macht sogar Andeutungen, dass sein Roman in der Qing-Dynastie spielt. Dies ist nicht nur eine Möglichkeit, einen zeitlosen Roman von ewigem Wert zu schaffen, sondern zeigt auch die interkulturelle Einstellung und Toleranz von Cao Xueqin. Auch innerhalb der chinesischen Kultur engagierte er sich für die Armen und Schwachen. Dies ist ein chinesischer Wert, aber auch ein gemeinsamer internationaler Wert der menschlichen Zivilisation in allen Kulturen. | ||
==4 为什么会关注中国的近现代文学？ == | ==4 为什么会关注中国的近现代文学？ == | ||
| − | Why do you care about modern Chinese literature? | + | ===4 Why do you care about modern Chinese literature?=== |
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| + | In my view, the best Chinese literature ever written was Tang poetry (shi). Among prose literature, I like novels like the ''Red Chamber Dreams'' most. It is especially astonishing how modern this genre was 250 years ago. The 2nd best Chinese literature was Republican literature by Lu Xun and others in the 1920s. They not only mastered the difficult task to establish baihuawen as the new written form, but were totally free, learned from both traditional Chinese and Western literature, and wrote the best literature globally at that time. Lu Xun used similar experiments in his literature like Madman's diary, the true story of A Q etc., namely to put a fictional element into a realist setting, like Kafka with the "Metamorphosis". This peak of Chinese literature is unreached until today. | ||
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| + | This is why I am more interested in premodern and modern Chinese literature than in the contemporary one. However, even though Chinese literature has lost quality when it took the path of the so-called "engaged literature" in 1927, putting political contents over literary quality, there are still extremely few but notable works of contemporary literature. These are worth to be translated. And I still hope that there will be more high quality literature in the future, which of course needs to learn from foreign literature (like Mo Yan learned from other Nobel Prize works) and which authors need to be able to speak several languages and travel the world. I am sure that in a future China, authors will be able to write freer again and therefore return to the top quality of literature produced in Tang Dynasty and in the 1920s. | ||
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| + | Modern literature in China created simply some of the best works of literature in the world. Of course the quality deteriorated, when literature took the path of engaged literature in 1927. But before that was a time of experiments, iconoclasm, Zero-point-literature (the Chinese May Fourth literature has parallels to the German literature after World War II), and Breakup. | ||
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| + | ===4 Warum interessieren Sie sich für moderne chinesische Literatur?=== | ||
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| + | Die beste chinesische Literatur, die je geschrieben wurde, ist meiner Meinung nach die Tang-Dichtung (shi). Von der Prosa-Literatur mag ich Romane wie die ''Träume der Roten Kammer'' am liebsten. Es ist besonders erstaunlich, wie modern dieses Genre vor 250 Jahren war. Die zweitbeste chinesische Literatur war die republikanische Literatur von Lu Xun und anderen in den 1920er Jahren. Sie meisterten nicht nur die schwierige Aufgabe, das Baihuawen als neue Schriftform zu etablieren, sondern waren auch völlig frei, lernten sowohl von der traditionellen chinesischen als auch von der westlichen Literatur und schrieben die beste Literatur der Welt zu dieser Zeit. Lu Xun wandte in seiner Literatur ähnliche Experimente an, wie z. B. das Tagebuch des Verrückten, die wahre Geschichte von A Q usw., nämlich ein fiktionales Element in ein realistisches Umfeld zu setzen, wie Kafka in der "Metamorphose". Dieser Gipfel der chinesischen Literatur ist bis heute unerreicht. | ||
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| + | Aus diesem Grund interessiere ich mich mehr für die vormoderne und moderne chinesische Literatur als für die zeitgenössische. Doch auch wenn die chinesische Literatur an Qualität verloren hat, als sie 1927 den Weg der so genannten "engagierten Literatur" einschlug und politische Inhalte über literarische Qualität stellte, gibt es doch noch sehr wenige, aber bemerkenswerte Werke der zeitgenössischen Literatur. Diese sind es wert, übersetzt zu werden. Und ich hoffe immer noch, dass es in Zukunft mehr hochwertige Literatur geben wird, die natürlich von ausländischer Literatur lernen muss (wie Mo Yan von anderen Nobelpreiswerken) und deren Autoren mehrere Sprachen sprechen und die Welt bereisen müssen. Ich bin sicher, dass in einem zukünftigen China die Autoren wieder freier schreiben können und somit zu der Spitzenqualität der Literatur aus der Tang-Dynastie und den 1920er Jahren zurückkehren werden. | ||
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| + | Die moderne Literatur in China hat einfach einige der besten Literaturwerke der Welt hervorgebracht. Natürlich verschlechterte sich die Qualität, als die Literatur 1927 den Weg der engagierten Literatur einschlug. Aber davor gab es eine Zeit der Experimente, des Bildersturms, der Nullpunkt-Literatur (4. Mai ähnlich wie die deutsche Literatur nach dem 2. Weltkrieg), des Aufbruchs etc. | ||
==5 如果讲广受欢迎的中国近代文学是一部中国近代史的话，你认为中国当代文学作品有什么特点？== | ==5 如果讲广受欢迎的中国近代文学是一部中国近代史的话，你认为中国当代文学作品有什么特点？== | ||
| − | If the popular modern Chinese literature is a history of modern China, what do you think are the characteristics of contemporary Chinese literature? | + | ===5 If the popular modern Chinese literature is a history of modern China, what do you think are the characteristics of contemporary Chinese literature?=== |
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| + | In the meantime, master narrators tell us certain decades of Chinese history, Lao She's Tea House, Ba Jin's Family, Qian Zhongshu's Weicheng, Mao Dun's Ziye, Mo Yan's Life and Death are wearing me out, and in newer times Xu Zechen describes life in Haidian since the 1980's, Zhang Jie's Heavy Wings and Yu Hua's "Brothers" explain both sides of the medal of the Reform and Opening Policy. | ||
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| + | Contemporary literature is documenting and presenting contemporay Chinese society. We lack the distance of time to evaluate what works of contemporary literature will be regarded as representative for today. Mandarin duck and butterfly literature (鸳鸯蝴蝶派) was the mainstream literature of the 1920s, but today we remember the rebellious baihua literature as being representative of that time. | ||
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| + | So the literature appears more diverse today. However, reality itself appears also more diverse today, with people living next door without knowing each other, with people living in filter bubbles and losing the ability to judge what is real and what is fake, to listen, to discuss and to revise their own opinions. | ||
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| + | Contemporary Chinese literature produces heros, we need more tragic heros. It follows the paths of affirmative, system stabilizing narratives. It misses alternative narratives, the voice of authoritative critical authors like Guenther Grass in Germany, which also in China was the original role of authors for millenia, but these authors are silent in today's China or have emigrated. According to statistics, Chinese are the most intelligent ethnicity in the world. So they should be generous enough to allow different voices according to the Chinese tradition of "harmonic but of a different opinion" (和而不同). | ||
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| + | ===5 Wenn die populäre moderne chinesische Literatur eine Geschichte des modernen China ist, was sind dann Ihrer Meinung nach die Merkmale der zeitgenössischen chinesischen Literatur?=== | ||
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| + | Inzwischen erzählen uns Meistererzähler bestimmte Jahrzehnte der chinesischen Geschichte, Lao She's Tea House, Ba Jin's Family, Qian Zhongshu's Weicheng, Mao Dun's Ziye, Mo Yan's Life and Death are wearing me out, und in neuerer Zeit beschreibt Xu Zechen das Leben in Haidian seit den 1980er Jahren, Zhang Jie's Heavy Wings und Yu Hua's "Brothers" erklären beide Seiten der Medaille der Reform- und Öffnungspolitik. | ||
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| + | Die zeitgenössische Literatur dokumentiert und präsentiert die chinesische Gesellschaft der Gegenwart. Uns fehlt der zeitliche Abstand, um zu beurteilen, welche Werke der Gegenwartsliteratur als repräsentativ für die heutige Zeit angesehen werden können. Die mandarinfarbene Enten- und Schmetterlingsliteratur (鸳鸯蝴蝶派) war die tiefe L-Literatur der 1920er Jahre, aber heute erinnern wir uns an die rebellische Baihua-Literatur als repräsentativ für diese Zeit. | ||
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| + | So erscheint die Literatur heute vielfältiger. Aber auch die Realität selbst erscheint heute vielfältiger, mit Menschen, die nebeneinander wohnen, ohne sich zu kennen, mit Menschen, die in Filterblasen leben und die Fähigkeit verloren haben, zu beurteilen, was echt und was unecht ist, zuzuhören, zu diskutieren und ihre eigene Meinung zu revidieren. | ||
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| + | Die zeitgenössische chinesische Literatur bringt Helden hervor, wir brauchen mehr tragische Helden. Sie folgt den Pfaden der affirmativen, systemstabilisierenden Erzählungen. Sie lässt alternative Erzählungen vermissen, die Stimme maßgeblicher kritischer Autoren wie Günther Grass in Deutschland, was auch in China seit Jahrtausenden die ursprüngliche Rolle von Autoren war, aber diese Autoren schweigen im heutigen China oder sind emigriert. Laut Statistik sind die Chinesen die intelligenteste Ethnie der Welt. Sie sollten also großzügig genug sein, andere Stimmen zuzulassen, gemäß der chinesischen Tradition der "harmonischen, aber anderen Meinung" (和而不同). | ||
| + | |||
| + | ===Notes=== | ||
| + | （一）现代文学与传统文学的冲突与承传 | ||
| + | 中国现代文学是在五四时期新的历史条件下产生的，它体现出全新的现代社会、现代人生的精神风貌和崭新的文学表述方式，但它也是几千年中国传统文学发展演进的必然结果。中国现代文学的出现即体现了现代新文学、新文化与传统旧文学、旧文化的根本冲突和根本转折。同时，中国现代文学与它几千年的文学母体也有着难以分割的联系。对传统的反叛往往是创造与更新的重要手段，而对传统精神的批判继承则是继往开来的重要规律。 | ||
| + | （二）中外文学的相互交融 | ||
| + | 五四时期外国文学在中国的译介、传播和影响，对中国现代文学的诞生和发展起到了积极作用，有一些新文学的作家作品甚至是在外国文学的直接影响下出现的。中国现代文学充分吸收了外来各国文学与文化的发展因素。整个中国新文学的形成与世界文学大潮的冲击有着密切关联。 | ||
| + | （三）伴随始终的使命感和责任感 | ||
| + | 时代历史所赋予中国现代文学的特殊使命，使之出现了一大批世纪性的大家与名作，并在整体上形成了自己特有的风格。中国现代文学虽然仅有短短三十年的创作历程，但大家纷涌，名作四起，还出现了一批个性鲜明、风格独特的创作流派。中国现代文学在整体上形成了自己的根本特质：这就是责任感、使命感以及对艺术境界的不懈追寻。这种特质使中国现代文学在思想和艺术上都达到了很高的水准。 | ||
==6 当代作品没有像过去那样吸引到海外观众，在您看来原因是什么呢？它们是否和中国的古典文学有差距？== | ==6 当代作品没有像过去那样吸引到海外观众，在您看来原因是什么呢？它们是否和中国的古典文学有差距？== | ||
| − | In your opinion, what are the reasons why contemporary works do not attract overseas audiences as much as they did in the past? Is there a gap between them and the classical Chinese literature? | + | ===6 In your opinion, what are the reasons why contemporary works do not attract overseas audiences as much as they did in the past? Is there a gap between them and the classical Chinese literature?=== |
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| + | The main difference between contemporary and modern Chinese authors is, that the contemporary ones do not read foreign literature on a daily basis, also because they don't know foreign languages any more. Mo Yan, who won the Nobel Prize, has done so, although he read other works which have won the Nobel Prize of literature in Chinese translation. | ||
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| + | The main difference between classical authors and contemporary authors is, that contemporary authors are not trained all their life in letters. They do not work hard for several years to pass the Keju. Instead, they are silenced by the banalities of the everyday, they think about buying a flat etc. And of course they cannot be such free thinkers as their counterparts in ancient times, because they live in an extremely regulated, maybe even overregulated and short-living society. They also have less common ground, because the filter bubbles of different countries differ and even the filter bubbles within China. | ||
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| + | The best of ancient Chinese literature, especially Tang poetry, is of timeless value, their authors have earned a place in eternity. The artistic transformation process was extremely long in ancient times, today authors may record their half-cooked thoughts by voice recorder and publish them online before they have finished their stumblings. | ||
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| + | ===6 Was sind Ihrer Meinung nach die Gründe dafür, dass zeitgenössische Werke das Publikum im Ausland nicht mehr so sehr anziehen wie früher? Gibt es eine Kluft zwischen ihnen und der klassischen chinesischen Literatur?=== | ||
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| + | Der Hauptunterschied zwischen zeitgenössischen und modernen chinesischen Autoren besteht darin, dass die zeitgenössischen Autoren nicht täglich ausländische Literatur lesen, auch weil sie keine Fremdsprachen mehr beherrschen. Mo Yan, der den Nobelpreis erhalten hat, hat dies getan, obwohl er andere Werke, die den Nobelpreis für Literatur erhalten haben, in chinesischer Übersetzung gelesen hat. | ||
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| + | Der Hauptunterschied zwischen klassischen Autoren und zeitgenössischen Autoren besteht darin, dass zeitgenössische Autoren nicht ihr ganzes Leben lang für das Schreiben ausgebildet werden. Sie arbeiten nicht mehrere Jahre lang hart, um das Keju zu bestehen. Stattdessen werden sie von den Banalitäten des Alltags zum Schweigen gebracht, sie denken über den Kauf einer Wohnung nach usw. Und natürlich können sie nicht so frei denken wie ihre Pendants in der Antike, denn sie leben in einer extrem regulierten, vielleicht sogar überregulierten und kurzlebigen Gesellschaft. Sie haben auch weniger Gemeinsamkeiten, weil die Filterblasen der verschiedenen Länder und sogar die Filterblasen innerhalb Chinas unterschiedlich sind. | ||
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| + | Das Beste der alten chinesischen Literatur, insbesondere die Tang-Dichtung, ist von zeitlosem Wert, ihre Autoren haben sich einen Platz in der Ewigkeit verdient. Der künstlerische Transformationsprozess war in der Antike extrem langwierig, heute können Autoren ihre halbgaren Gedanken mit einem Diktiergerät aufzeichnen und sie online veröffentlichen, bevor sie ihre Gedankengänge beendet haben. | ||
==7 除去鲁迅、余秋雨等人的知名作品，你在挑选近现代翻译作品的时候有什么标准吗？== | ==7 除去鲁迅、余秋雨等人的知名作品，你在挑选近现代翻译作品的时候有什么标准吗？== | ||
| − | Apart from the well-known works of Lu Xun and Yu Qiuyu, do you have any criteria for selecting modern works for translation? | + | ===Apart from the well-known works of Lu Xun and Yu Qiuyu, do you have any criteria for selecting modern works for translation?=== |
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| + | The most important reason to me is, if a story grabs me, and may also grab the readers of my target culture. Let me explain this with the following examples: | ||
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| + | To see Cheng Tiansong grow up in the bank business and finally reading of his heroic and creative symbolic protest against foreign tea traders, when he dumped tea leafs into the Huangpu river is simply a joy to read in Ji Yu's ''Die Clans von Xin'an''. | ||
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| + | In Han Shaogong's collection of short stories ''Fading moon over the abandoned courtyard'', we read through the eyes of different people. Impressive is the perspective of a person reading water meters in a house and explaining that in flat no. 5 a grandmother lived with her child and both died one after the other. Starting from the gap in the list of meter figures, the narrator explains that the flat is not rented out again because people fear the ghosts of the two women. The narrator describes, how he remembers the steps of the girl when she came home every night and writes: "Since these steps disappeared, I looked out of the window into the quiet night to the moon. It was as if something was missing in the night." Descriptions like this last in the mind of the readers. | ||
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| + | Sometimes a story also touches me because it describes scenes familiar to me. The life of students and young graduates on and around the campus of Peking University described by Xu Zechen in ''Ah Beijing!'' matches my memories. The cohabiting of young people, the complex relations, work as cook and being a rebel poet, all of these seemingly weird constellations create a lively portray of Peking University campus. Therefore even readers who have never been there can feel the atmosphere there. | ||
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| + | Zhang Wei is a master of dense atmosphere and magic-realistic description of nature. In his story ''Sea wind'', published in the collection of short stories of the same title, the reader only from sudden appearance of certain characters (thin children with large stomachs etc.) realizes, that the country must be in a famine and that the protagonists of the story, who are experts in getting fish out of the sea and creating delicious fish soup, actually are the salvation for the people living further inland, who finally also come to the shore and are saved. | ||
==8 像你提到，一部翻译作品的“异域感”是吸引外国读者阅读的原因之一，除此之外还有别的原因吗？（比如一部小说的历史性背景是否也是原因之一？） == | ==8 像你提到，一部翻译作品的“异域感”是吸引外国读者阅读的原因之一，除此之外还有别的原因吗？（比如一部小说的历史性背景是否也是原因之一？） == | ||
| − | As you mentioned, the "exoticism" of a translated work is one of the reasons that attracts foreign readers to read it. (For example, is the historical context of a novel also a reason?) | + | ===8 As you mentioned, the "exoticism" of a translated work is one of the reasons that attracts foreign readers to read it. Which other reasons are there? (For example, is the historical context of a novel also a reason?)=== |
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| + | Curiosity is a common characteristic of readers all around the world. To discover something new or in greater density, for example to dive into a different place and different time, is attractive. Places and times, which bear mystery, are attractive because of their exoticism. Places and times you adore are also attractive. These can be historical turning points or simply a country you like. China still has a long way to win the hearts of people around the world, but it will be successful the freer and the cleaner it becomes. China may revive their ancient virtues like to base things on merits, to consider criticism as constructive, to admit if one was wrong in ones history, to help the poor, the disadvantaged and the minorities, to put ones own language, culture and nation last, and to be humble. But when it will be successful, then there actually may come a new time of "Chinoiserie", where people in the world simply want to read more Chinese literature, because everything which is Chinese is considered "fancy". | ||
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| + | ===8 Wie Sie erwähnten, ist die "Exotik" eines übersetzten Werks einer der Gründe, die ausländische Leser zum Lesen anregen. Welche anderen Gründe gibt es noch? (Ist zum Beispiel der historische Kontext eines Romans auch ein Grund?)=== | ||
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| + | Neugier ist eine gemeinsame Eigenschaft von Lesern auf der ganzen Welt. Etwas Neues oder in größerer Dichte zu entdecken, zum Beispiel in einen anderen Ort und eine andere Zeit einzutauchen, ist attraktiv. Orte und Zeiten, die ein Geheimnis in sich tragen, sind wegen ihrer Exotik attraktiv. Attraktiv sind auch Orte und Zeiten, die Sie verehren. Das können historische Wendepunkte sein oder einfach ein Land, das man mag. China hat noch einen langen Weg vor sich, um die Herzen der Menschen auf der ganzen Welt zu gewinnen, aber es wird erfolgreich sein, je freier und sauberer es wird. China kann seine alten Tugenden wieder aufleben lassen, wie z. B. die Dinge auf Verdiensten aufzubauen, Kritik als konstruktiv zu betrachten, zuzugeben, wenn man sich in seiner Geschichte geirrt hat, den Armen, den Benachteiligten und den Minderheiten zu helfen, die eigene Sprache, Kultur und Nation an die letzte Stelle zu setzen und bescheiden zu sein. Aber wenn das gelingt, dann kann es tatsächlich zu einer neuen Zeit der "Chinoiserie" kommen, in der die Menschen in der Welt einfach mehr chinesische Literatur lesen wollen, weil alles, was chinesisch ist, als "schick" gilt. | ||
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| + | 本身作品的故事情节以及所营造的脱离现实生活中的世界，就会吸引一部分的读者，比如《哈利波特》这一系列的书籍因为故事中的所营造的霍格沃滋学院是以及作者所塑造的世界都与现实生活完全不一致，但却又十分有趣，因此这异常符合部分读者的阅读兴趣。 | ||
| + | 另一原因则是出于读者对作者写作风格的喜爱，因而会阅读同一个作者的所有不同作品。 | ||
==9 在做了这么多年的对比研究后，你认为中西方文学的关注点差异和共通点都有哪些？== | ==9 在做了这么多年的对比研究后，你认为中西方文学的关注点差异和共通点都有哪些？== | ||
| − | After so many years of comparative research, what do you think are the differences and commonalities between the concerns of Chinese and Western literature? | + | ===9 After so many years of comparative research, what do you think are the differences and commonalities between the concerns of Chinese and Western literature?=== |
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| + | The main difference is that Western literature is almost not restricted. Therefore Chinese Writers have a less fortunate starting point. Therefore it is even more remarkable if they produce a few pieces at the level of world literature. | ||
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| + | Another main difference is that in Western literature, originality and creativity is appreciated more than rafinesse in expression. | ||
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| + | If in Western literature governments or politics are mentioned, they are mostly mentioned in a negative way or criticized. In Chinese literature, the only criticism of governments you find is the one of foreign governments. This makes is sometimes impossible for a Western reader to continue reading, because the constant praise, especially in the category of propaganda literature, scares readers off. | ||
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| + | Literature first of all is a way of human communication which bridges time, space and minds. The nation becomes less and less important as a category of literature. Today we have Chinese writers who write in Chinese in America or in English. We have 100 million people worldwide who learn Chinese and who may read the one or other piece of Chinese literature in its original language. | ||
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| + | ===9 Nach so vielen Jahren vergleichender Forschung, was sind Ihrer Meinung nach die Unterschiede und Gemeinsamkeiten zwischen den Anliegen der chinesischen und der westlichen Literatur?=== | ||
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| + | Der Hauptunterschied besteht darin, dass die westliche Literatur fast keine Beschränkungen kennt. Daher haben chinesische Schriftsteller eine weniger glückliche Ausgangsposition. Umso bemerkenswerter ist es, wenn sie ein paar Werke auf dem Niveau der Weltliteratur hervorbringen. | ||
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| + | Ein weiterer Hauptunterschied besteht darin, dass in der westlichen Literatur Originalität und Kreativität mehr geschätzt werden als Raffinesse im Ausdruck. | ||
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| + | Wenn in der westlichen Literatur Regierungen oder Politik erwähnt werden, dann meist in negativer Weise oder in Form von Kritik. In der chinesischen Literatur findet man nur Kritik an Regierungen, und zwar an ausländischen Regierungen. Das macht es einem westlichen Leser manchmal unmöglich, weiterzulesen, denn das ständige Lob, besonders in der Kategorie der Propagandaliteratur, schreckt die Leser ab. | ||
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| + | Literatur ist in erster Linie eine Form der menschlichen Kommunikation, die Zeit, Raum und Köpfe überbrückt. Die Nation wird als Kategorie der Literatur immer unwichtiger. Heute gibt es chinesische Schriftsteller, die in Amerika auf Chinesisch oder auf Englisch schreiben. Wir haben weltweit 100 Millionen Menschen, die Chinesisch lernen und das eine oder andere Werk der chinesischen Literatur in der Originalsprache lesen können. | ||
==10 文学是文化交流中很重要的一点，是否可以通过文学翻译打破东西方的认知偏见？== | ==10 文学是文化交流中很重要的一点，是否可以通过文学翻译打破东西方的认知偏见？== | ||
| − | Literature is an important point of cultural exchange. Is it possible to break down the perceived bias between East and West through literary translation? | + | ===10 Literature is an important point of cultural exchange. Is it possible to break down the perceived bias between East and West through literary translation?=== |
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| + | Literature is also an important point of exchange of lives. When you dive deep into a piece of Chinese literature, you even switch lifes with a Chinese protagonist. What is a better way to overcome prejudices than to be a part of another society and culture? | ||
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| + | Not everybody has the means and time to travel to understand different cultures. Especially during the pandemic, we can instead watch a documentary or take a book. | ||
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| + | In Europe, we have discovered that when there are no borders between countries who have fought each other as enemies in the second world war, that French people are almost totally like Germans etc. If no education tells you that you are different, you start from the common things. From the space, the earth seems one, with no borders. According to statistics, Chinese people are the most intelligent people on earth. From concepts of harmony, datong and the Chinese 56 ethnicities all united in the Chinese citizens, Chinese deeply feel, that Tibetans, Uighurs, people from Hong Kong, Taiwan and even oversea's Chinese in Singapore and the United States all are equal and earn dignity. And in this, they are equal with the ethnicities along the Belt and Road initiative and with all the different ethnicities around the world. Many people in the world expect China to be the new leader of the world. The world's eyes are on China now, how China treats its ethnicities and how it realizes the concepts of "he er bu tong". | ||
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| + | I don't think that ordinary people have prejudices from the very beginning. When children grow up, they don't differentiate, classify and stigmatize. You can see that with the gender roles. If you dress a girl as a boy, people will play with her as with a boy, play soccer and give her car toys to play. If you explain to them that it was a girl, they apologize. | ||
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| + | ===10 Literatur ist ein wichtiger Punkt des kulturellen Austauschs. Ist es möglich, die vermeintliche Kluft zwischen Ost und West durch literarische Übersetzungen zu überwinden?=== | ||
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| + | Die Literatur ist auch ein wichtiger Punkt für den Austausch von Leben. Wenn man tief in ein Stück chinesischer Literatur eintaucht, tauscht man sogar das Leben mit einem chinesischen Protagonisten. Gibt es einen besseren Weg, Vorurteile zu überwinden, als Teil einer anderen Gesellschaft und Kultur zu sein? | ||
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| + | Nicht jeder hat die Mittel und die Zeit zu reisen, um andere Kulturen zu verstehen. Vor allem während der Pandemie können wir uns stattdessen einen Dokumentarfilm ansehen oder ein Buch zur Hand nehmen. | ||
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| + | In Europa haben wir festgestellt, dass es keine Grenzen zwischen Ländern gibt, die sich im Zweiten Weltkrieg als Feinde bekämpft haben, dass die Franzosen fast völlig wie Deutsche sind usw. Wenn einem keine Erziehung sagt, dass man anders ist, geht man von den Gemeinsamkeiten aus. Aus dem Weltraum betrachtet, scheint die Erde eins zu sein, ohne Grenzen. Laut Statistik sind die Chinesen die intelligentesten Menschen auf der Erde. Ausgehend von den Konzepten der Harmonie, des Datong und der 56 chinesischen Ethnien, die alle in den chinesischen Bürgern vereint sind, empfinden die Chinesen zutiefst, dass Tibeter, Uiguren, Menschen aus Hongkong, Taiwan und sogar Übersee-Chinesen in Singapur und den Vereinigten Staaten alle gleich sind und Würde verdienen. Und in dieser Hinsicht sind sie gleichberechtigt mit den Ethnien entlang der Gürtel- und Straßeninitiative und mit all den verschiedenen Ethnien auf der ganzen Welt. Viele Menschen in der Welt erwarten, dass China die neue Führungsrolle in der Welt übernimmt. Die Augen der Welt sind jetzt auf China gerichtet, darauf, wie China seine Ethnien behandelt und wie es die Konzepte von "he er bu tong" umsetzt. | ||
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| + | Ich glaube nicht, dass die einfachen Menschen von Anfang an Vorurteile haben. Wenn Kinder aufwachsen, differenzieren, klassifizieren und stigmatisieren sie nicht. Das kann man an den Geschlechterrollen sehen. Wenn man ein Mädchen wie einen Jungen kleidet, werden die Leute mit ihr wie mit einem Jungen spielen, Fußball spielen und ihr Autospielzeug zum Spielen geben. Wenn man ihnen erklärt, dass es ein Mädchen war, entschuldigen sie sich. | ||
Latest revision as of 11:15, 21 June 2022
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Interview: Final Version CN EN (For English, please see beneath.)
娄康2022年6月20日采访吴漠汀 （英文请见后面）
1. 在翻译一部本土化气息特别浓的小说前，是否会到当地进行走访呢？
虽然不可否认，仍然有不少优秀的翻译作品其译者没有机会走访书中所述之处，但我个人认为，实地走访文中场景是十分重要的，这样译者可以深深的沉浸在原作所处的社会和历史环境中。2014年9月21日我在西安与贾平凹见面，他给我展示了他家里的木制饕餮面具等具有地区特色的收藏品，并向我解释了这些收藏品的地域文化根源。我也从许多研究外国作家的中国同事的口中得知，他们走访过原文的发生地，也走访过原文作者们的墓地，以此获得更深层的感受。许多演员也都潜心研究和体验他们所饰历史人物的生活。
从在北京大学读书时起，我就尽量花费较多的时间研究曹雪芹的生平。中国艺术研究院红楼梦研究所给了我很多帮助，他们送给了我《红楼梦大辞典》，我还走访了位于香山脚下的曹雪芹纪念馆，也曾到访过重建的北京大观园，除此之外，还参观过故宫，品尝了小说里提及的各种菜肴，我也在南京待过一段时间。
我学到最多的是中国和国外的各种文学研究文献，以及参加中国的红学研讨会，同事们在会上分享最新的研究成果。我更多的读了关于康熙、雍正和乾隆时代的生活以及满族文化、八旗制度等。当然，我主要的任务是牵着读者的手，带他们穿越回250年前的中国，让那个时代的繁华生活重新变得鲜活。为了将这部小说带入当今世界，我还参与了一个项目，以D书的形式重现这部小说，这是一本袖珍书，在小说文本中加入歌曲和视频片段的二维码，在智能设备和谷歌眼镜上可见，是法兰克福书展上最成功的项目之一。通过这种方式，我们也可以赢得德国年轻读者来阅读这部中国经典作品。
我在翻译绵绵的小说《熊猫》时也曾做过类似的工作。我在上海拜访了她，她带我看了小说中出现的所有地方。我在那里发现，这部小说实际上是对她生活的记录。同样，我在1992年12月2日见到了王蒙，后来又在德国和哈佛大学见过几次。2009年5月25日，我与韩寒通了电话，我读了他的博客和杂志，看了他拍摄的电影，翻译了他的三部小说，还在德国最重要的报纸上向德国读者介绍了韩寒的访谈。2009年9月12日，在莫言获得诺贝尔奖三年之前，我在法兰克福见到了他。我发表了对他的采访，并向德国读者更多地介绍了他。这些只是他获得诺奖的很小的一块镶嵌。我在北京见到了余华，印象深刻的是，这位伟大的作家对待他的译者没有任何架子，而是平等相待。
2. 能否拿《红楼梦》举例，在翻译中国古代作品的时候，如何尽可能的避免翻译里面带来的文化空白问题？
《红楼梦》在时间和空间上存在着差距。当贾宝玉称呼他的祖母时，他不叫她 "奶奶"，而是叫 "贾母"，他的父亲、母亲、表兄弟等也是如此，他们如外人那样直呼其名，而不是因亲戚关系按照不同地位而有不同称谓，如 "三爷 "等。这在250年前的中国很常见，而在250年前的欧洲也很常见。所以与其说是文化上的差距，不如说是时间上的差距。因此，如果译者决定遵循“交际翻译”策略，他可以把它直接变成 "奶奶、爸爸、妈妈 "，使文本更好地被理解（本地化）。如果重视原作的真实性和作者出版前的最后一个手稿版本，可以保留原来的间接称呼，使文本在今天的读者听起来更遥远和正式（外国化）。
《红楼梦》中的语言比较间接，性生活多以 "云雨之欢 "来描述。闵福德解决了这个问题，他对两个场景的描述比原著中的描述更详细。
即使是小说中描述的植物，在欧洲也不那么常见。在欧洲，即使在冬季也能保持针状绿叶的树木是 "常绿乔木、常青树"，其中 "松树 "是最常见的一种。在中国，最常看到的是 "东方红"（Platycladus Orientalis）。这两种树都属于 "conifer(常绿乔木、常青树、松树)"，最明显的区别是，欧洲的叶子很薄，几乎像针叶，而中国的叶子则较大。然而，当用 "Platycladus Orientalis "来翻译柏树时，欧洲读者总是会想到一个异国的环境。这种翻译策略被称为 "外国化"。在原文中，提到 "松树"主要是为了给人留下清代中国常见的常青树的印象。因此，将"柏"、"柏树"、"松柏树 "翻译成 "conifer(松树)"是完全可以的，这种策略称为 "本地化"。这确保了欧洲读者不会被误导，不会注意到不需要的细节，而是能够跟随故事的脉络发展。
然而，小说中的执法者被称为“锦衣军”，他们没收贾家的财产，抓捕家庭成员，履行了西方今天的警察职能。然而，用 "警察 "来翻译“锦衣军”这样“本土化”的名词可能会使读者感到惊讶，因为这听起来很现代。因此，更加外国化，甚至异国情调的术语“gold jackets”可能会显得更加合适。在整个翻译过程中，会不断需要译者去做出选择，每个人都可能有不同的意见，什么选择是最合适的？没有人把译者从做出选择的负担中解放出来。重要的是，译者在他或她的一生中，不应一直坚持他最初的选择，译者应始终对同事、红学专家和读者的建议持开放态度。因此，以一种方式翻译一个词，在2000年可能是一个好的选择，而以不同的方式翻译，在2020年可能是一个更好的选择。这也取决于目标读者以及译者希望给他们留下什么印象。如果目标读者是红学家，就可以更多地坚持原文，少做解释（外国化），如果目标读者是大众，就可以更自由，让文本更接近读者（本地化）。
3. 在翻译中遇到的最麻烦的翻译问题会是哪一类？是由于什么方面的文化差异造成的呢？
就像爱斯基摩人，他们有许多专门的词来描述 "雪"一样，有些中文词在西方语言中有更多不同对应的词，因此，译者需要做出决定。例如一个比较困难的点是，"姑娘 "这个词，不仅可以是主人对晚辈的称呼，也可以是对仆人的称呼，甚至是仆人对女主人的称呼，比如林黛玉（如第82章）。所以它需要被翻译成 "主人"、"女儿"、"小姐"，这取决于谁用它来称呼谁。有时一个汉语词语在西方语言中表示不同的几种东西，所以作为译者，你们必须做出决定。最棘手的是中国读者的背景知识，特别是提到的汉字的偏旁部首，还有如同宇宙那样丰富的早期诗词的边边角角），这些都牵动中国读者的神经。当林黛玉引用《西厢记》中的诗句时，贾宝玉立即知道她爱上了他。这些微妙的东西需要在字里行间表达出来，而不是让西方读者先知道《西厢记》。
这里有例子，在文本中做出进一步的解释或注释，会更有助于理解：在第92章中，宝玉提到了几个中国读者熟悉的历史女性人物，但西方人并不熟悉。"[...]班婕妤、蔡文姬、谢道韫诸人。" 这在德语中成为一个很长的翻译："[...]汉成帝饱读诗书的嫔妃班婕妤，以及博学多才的两位女性诗人蔡文姬和谢道韫。("die belesene Konkubine des Herrschers Tscheng-di von Han Ban Djie-yü and die zwei Dichterinnen Tsai Wën-dji und Hsie Dau-yün")。
令人头疼的还有一些带有文化色彩的词汇，比如关于中国服装、中国菜肴和习俗的名称。其中一些专业术语即使对中国读者来说也不完全清楚。在这种情况下，译者需要给出更多的解释，以保持读者对故事的关注，而不是让他们分心，因为这些东西并不打算分散原文读者的注意力。另外，小说中多处提到了迷信（superstitious beliefs）。有时我们会有 "假友"，例如，当巫婆将针刺入布偶时，这是我们熟悉的女巫历史和巫毒崇拜。然而，我们不能简单地用熟悉的西方词语来形容它，因为这些文化上的相似之处有其当地的真正传统，可能是独立发展的，也可能是与某种文化交流形成。在任何情况下，重要的是要把差异说清楚，不要让读者把事情搞混。另外，第120章中的贾政认不出来他的儿子贾宝玉，而贾宝玉却以某种方式离开了尘世，这与西方读者熟悉的《圣经》中的故事是类似的。然而，即使是这些相似的故事，在当地的传统和背景下也能获得适当的翻译，以提高对文化传统的认知。
有一次，北静王的衣服被称为穿着“江牙海水五爪龙”图案。如果没有解释，西方读者可能不知道这种说法是对海水江崖纹的俗称，即在混乱的江水上显示五爪龙，而这种图案是为皇帝或皇室保留的。因此，提到他衣服上的这一图案细节，支持了北静王的崇高地位和权威。书中描述了很多衣服，其中很多都混合了满族和汉族文化，甚至还可以找到西方的来源和影响。小说中描述的许多文化现象或产品并不是纯汉文化的，也不是纯满族文化的，而是通过混合和融合呈现在小说里。曹雪芹玩转不同的文化，甚至减少小说设定在清朝的暗示。这不仅是创造具有永恒价值的小说的一种方式，而且显示了曹雪芹的跨文化态度和宽容。在中国文化中，他还致力于帮助穷人和弱者。这是中国人的价值观，但也是整个人类文明共同的国际文化价值观。
4. 为什么会关注中国的近现代文学？
在我看来，有史以来最好的中国文学是唐诗（shi）。在散文文学中，我最喜欢像《红楼梦》这样的小说。尤其令人惊讶的是，这种体裁在250年前是多么的现代。中国第二好的文学是鲁迅等人在20世纪20年代创作的民国文学。他们不仅主导了建立白话文作为新的书面形式的艰巨任务，而且完全自由，他们从中国传统文学和西方文学中学习，并写出了当时全球最好的文学作品。鲁迅在他的文学作品中，如《狂人日记》、《阿Q正传》等，也采用了类似的实验，即把虚构的元素放到现实主义的环境中，就像卡夫卡的《变形记》一样。中国文学的这一高峰直到今天还没有达到。
这就是为什么我对中国前现代和现代文学比对当代文学更感兴趣。然而，尽管中国文学在1927年出现了所谓的“engaged literature”（可译为：方向文学），具体提出“文艺为工农大众服务"的文学方向，自此后的中国文学，几乎都遵循这个思路，即将政治内容置于文学质量之上，从而文学失去了本应有的力量和质量。当然，当代文学仍然还有极少值得关注的作品。这些作品是值得翻译的。而且我仍然希望将来会有更多高质量的文学作品，这当然需要向外国文学学习（就像莫言向其他诺贝尔奖作品学习一样），而且作者需要能够说几种语言，走遍世界。我相信，在未来的中国，作者将能够再次自由写作，从而恢复到唐代和20世纪20年代产生的顶级文学作品的质量。
中国的现代文学创造了一些世界上最好的文学作品。当然，当文学在1927年走上“方向文学”的道路后，整体质量下滑。但在此之前，中国文学具有百废俱兴的特点（中国的五四文学与二战后的德国文学有相似之处），是一个破旧立新的新时代。
5. 如果讲广受欢迎的中国近代文学是一部中国近代史的话，你认为中国当代文学作品有什么特点？
在此期间，大师级的叙述者告诉我们关于中国历史的某些年代，老舍的《茶馆》、巴金的《家》、钱钟书的《围城》、茅盾的《子夜》、莫言的《生死疲劳》，而在较近的时代，徐则臣描述了80年代以后的海淀生活，张洁的《沉重的翅膀》和余华的《兄弟》解释了改革开放政策的两面。
当代文学是记录和呈现当代中国社会的。我们缺乏时间的距离来评估哪些当代文学作品会被认为是今天的代表。鸳鸯蝴蝶派是20世纪20年代的主流文学，但今天我们记住了叛逆的白话文是那个时代的代表。
因此，今天的文学显得更加多样化。然而，现实本身在今天也显得更加多样化，人们住在隔壁，却互不相识，人们生活在过滤的泡沫中，失去了判断什么是真实和虚假的能力，失去了倾听、讨论和修正自己意见的能力。
当代中国文学产生了英雄，我们需要更多的悲剧式英雄。它遵循着积极且中庸的叙述方式。它错过了替代性叙事，错过了像德国的君特·格拉斯（Guenther Grass）这样的权威批评家的声音，这在中国也是几千年来作家的原本角色，但这些作家在今天的中国都沉默了，或者已经移民了。据统计，中国人是世界上最聪明的民族。所以他们应该有足够的胸怀，根据中国 "和而不同 "的传统，允许不同的声音。
6. 当代作品没有像过去那样吸引到海外观众，在您看来原因是什么呢？它们是否和中国的古典文学有差距？
中国当代作家和现代作家之间的主要区别是，当代作家并不每天阅读外国文学作品，有部分的原因是他们不懂外语。获得诺贝尔奖的莫言就是这样的，尽管他阅读了其他获得诺贝尔文学奖的中译本作品。
古典作家与当代作家的主要区别在于，当代作家并非一生都在接受文学训练。他们不会为了通过科举考试而努力工作数年。相反，他们被日常的平淡生活所压抑，他们考虑的是买房子等等。当然，他们也不可能像古代的文人墨客那样成为自由的思想家，因为他们生活在一个极其规范，甚至可能是过度规范的社会，加上科技的便利，此时的文学作品多多少少有着昙花一现的危险。他们的共同点也比较少，因为不同国家的过滤泡沫不同，甚至中国内部的过滤泡沫也不同。
中国古代文学的精华，尤其是唐诗，具有永恒的价值，它们的作者已经赢得了永恒的地位。在古代，艺术转化的过程是极其漫长的，今天的作者可能用录音机记录下他们半生不熟的想法，在他们磕磕绊绊的完成之前就在网上发表。
7. 除去鲁迅、余秋雨等人的知名作品，你在挑选近现代翻译作品的时候有什么标准吗？
对我来说，最重要的原因是，如果一个故事抓住了我，也可能抓住我的目标文化的读者。让我用下面的例子来解释。
看到程天送自小在银行业的环境下长大，最后读到他将茶叶倒入黄浦江，对外国茶商进行英雄式的、创造性的象征性抗议，这和在季宇的《新安家族》中简直是同一种阅读的乐趣。
在韩少功的短篇小说集中，我们通过不同人的眼睛来阅读《空院残月》。令人印象深刻的是一个人在房子里读水表，并解释说在5号公寓里，一位奶奶和她的孩子住在一起，两人相继去世。对于水表刻度上的空白，叙述者解释说，由于人们害怕这两个女人的鬼魂，所以该公寓没有再租出去。叙述者描述了他如何记住女孩每天晚上回家时的台阶，并写道："一旦消失，夜深人静之时，我仰望泼入窗口的银月，会觉得夜晚缺失了什么"，像这样的描述在读者心中经久不衰。
有时一个故事也会打动我，因为它描述了我熟悉的场景。徐则臣在《啊北京！》中描述的北京大学校园内外的学生和年轻毕业生的生活与我的记忆相吻合。故事里面，年轻人复杂的同居和三角恋爱关系，心怀诗人梦想的厨师等等，所有这些不易理解、似爱非爱的复杂情感关系构建了一幅幅生动的“北漂”形象。因此，即使没有去过那里的读者也能感受到那里的气氛。
张炜是描绘浓郁气氛和神奇自然的大师。在他发表于同名短篇小说集的故事《海边的风》中，读者仅从某些人物（例如：瘦弱的孩子有着大肚腩等）的突然出现就意识到，这个国家一定处于饥荒之中，故事中的主人公是从海里捞鱼和制作美味鱼汤的专家，他们实际上是对生活在内陆的人们的拯救，他们最终也来到了岸上，并得到了拯救。
8. 像你提到，一部翻译作品的“异域感”是吸引外国读者阅读的原因之一，除此之外还有别的原因吗？（比如一部小说的历史性背景是否也是原因之一？)
好奇心是全世界读者的共同特征。“发现新大陆”或身临其境的阅读体验，好似进入一个全新时空，读者被其深深吸引。带有神秘感的地方和时间，因其异国情调而具有吸引力。你崇拜的地方和时间也是有吸引力的。这些可以是历史的转折点，也可以只是你喜欢的国家。中国要赢得全世界人民的心，还有很长的路要走，但它越是自由，越是干净，就会越成功。中国可能会恢复其古老的美德，如以事实为依据，将批评视为建设性的，承认自己在历史上的错误，帮助穷人、弱势群体和少数民族，将自己的语言、文化和民族放在最后，并保持谦逊。但是当它成功的时候，实际上可能会出现一个新的 "中国化 "的时代，世界上的人们只是想读更多的中国文学，因为所有中国的东西都被认为是 "花哨的"。
9. 在做了这么多年的对比研究后，你认为中西方文学的关注点差异和共通点都有哪些？
主要的区别是，西方文学几乎没有限制。因此，中国作家的起点就不那么幸运了。因此，如果他们能写出几篇达到世界文学水平的作品，那就更了不起了。
另一个主要区别是，在西方文学中，人们对原创性和创造性的赞赏多于对精致的表达方式的肯定。
如果在西方文学中提到政府或政治，它们大多是以负面的方式被提及或被批评。在中国文学中，你能找到的对政府的批评只有对外国政府的批评。这使得西方读者有时无法继续阅读，因为不断的赞美，尤其是在宣传文学的范畴内，会吓跑读者。
文学首先是人类交流的一种方式，它连接着时间、空间和思想。作为文学的一个类别，民族变得越来越不重要。今天，我们有中国作家在美国用中文或英文写作。我们在全世界有一亿人在学习中文，他们可能会用原文阅读一篇或另一篇中国文学作品。
10. 文学是文化交流中很重要的一点，是否可以通过文学翻译打破东西方的认知偏见？
文学也是生命交流的一个重要节点。当你深入到一部中国文学作品中时，你甚至会和中国的主人公交换生命。有什么比成为另一个社会和文化的一部分更能克服偏见的方法呢？
不是每个人都有能力和时间去旅行，了解不同的文化。特别是在新冠疫情期间，我们反而可以看一部纪录片或拿一本书。
在欧洲，我们发现，当那些在第二次世界大战中作为敌人互相厮杀的国家之间没有边界时，法国人几乎完全像德国人等等。如果没有教育告诉你，你是不同的，你就会从共同的东西开始。从太空中看，地球似乎是一个整体，没有边界。据统计，中国人是地球上最聪明的人。从和谐的概念来看，大同和中国56个民族都团结在一起成为中国公民是一样的道理，中国人深深感到，西藏人、维吾尔人、香港人、台湾人，甚至新加坡和美国的海外华人都是平等的，都有尊严。在这一点上，他们与 "一带一路 "倡议沿线的民族以及世界各地的所有不同民族是平等的。世界上许多人期望中国成为世界的新领袖。世界的目光现在都在关注中国，关注中国如何对待其各民族，如何实现 "和而不同 "的理念。
我不认为普通人从一开始就有偏见。在孩童时代，他们不会进行区分、分类和污名化。你可以从性别角色中看到这一点。如果你把一个女孩打扮成男孩，人们会像对待男孩一样和她玩，踢足球，给她汽车玩具玩。如果你向他们解释那是个女孩，他们会道歉。
Interview by Lou Kang with Martin Woesler, June 20, 2022 (for Chinese, please see a few pages further up)
1. Do you visit the local area before translating a novel that is particularly localized?
Although there are also good translations of translators who have not visited the original sites, I think it is very important that the translator deeply immerses into the social-historical situation of the original. I met Jia Pingwa on Sep 21, 2014 in Xi'an and he showed me his home full of regional artefacts like wooden Taotie masks and explained the regional cultural roots of these artefacts to me. I have also heard from a lot of Chinese colleagues, who study foreign authors, that they visit the places of their works and their graves to get an impression of the atmosphere. A lot of actors dive into the life of the historical characters they are acting.
I personally have spent as much time as I could on the traces of Cao Xueqin since when I was a student at Peking University. Very helpful were the Red Chamber Research Institute (中国艺术研究院红楼梦研究所), where I got the present of the Hongloumeng Dictionary 《红楼梦大辞典》, the Cao Xueqin Remembrance Site (曹雪芹纪念馆) at the foot of the Xiangshan, I have visted the reconstructed Daguanyuan (北京大观园), and the Gugong (故宫), have eaten some of the dishes presented in the novel and spent some time time in Nanking.
The most I have learned from the diverse research literature in China and abroad and from attending Redology conferences in China, where the newest research results were presented by colleagues. I have read more about what was life like in the times of Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong and about Manchu culture, the Banner system. However, the main task is to take the readers by the hand and abduct to China 250 years back in time and to make the bustling life of that time become alive again. To bring the novel into today's world, I also participated in a project to recreate the novel in the form of a D Book, which is a pocket size book adding songs and video clips to the novel text with QR codes, visible on smart devices and also on Google glasses, one of the most successful items at the Frankfurt book fair. In this way, we could also win younger readers in Germany to read this Chinese classic.
I have done so similarly with Mian Mian's novel Panda Sex, I visited her in Shanghai and she showed me all the places who appear in the novel. What I found out there was, that the novel was actually a recording of her life. Similarly, I met Wang Meng on December 2, 1992 and several times later in Germany and at Harvard University. On May 25, 2009, I spoke with Han Han on the phone, I read his blogs, watched his films and TV series, when I translated three of his novels. I also introduced Han Han's interview to the German readers in the most important German newspaper. On September 12, 2009, I met Mo Yan in Frankfurt three years before he was awarded the Nobel Prize. I published an interview with him and introduced him more to German readers. All of these were only a tiny mosaic part of his promotion to be awarded the prize. I met Yu Hua in Beijing and was impressed, that this great author treated his translators without any airs and graces, but as equals.
2. Can you take the example of the Dream of the Red Chamber: How to avoid cultural gaps in the translation of ancient Chinese works?
There are gaps in time and space. When Jia Baoyu addresses his grandmother, he does not call her "grandma", but "Jia Mu", the same with his father, mother, cousins etc., which are addressed with their absolute, not relative position, like "third master" etc. This is common 250 years ago in China, and it was common 250 years ago in Europe. So it is more a gap in time than in culture. Therefore, if the translator decides to follow the strategy of “communicative translation”, he may turn it into the direct form "grandma, father, mother" to make the text better understandable (localization). If one values the authenticity of the original and the last manuscript version of the author before publication, one can keep the original indirect addressing, making the text sound more distant and formal (foreignization) to today's readers.
The language in the Red Chamber Dreams is more indirect, sexuality is mostly described with "the joy of clouds and rain". Minford has solved that problem by describing two scenes in more detail than they are described in the original.
Even the plants described in the novel are not so common in Europe. In Europe, the trees who keep their needle like green leaves even during the winter, are "conifers", with the "pine" as the most common sort. In China, the "Platycladus Orientalis", is seen most often. Both trees belong to the "coniferous" trees, the most obvious difference is that the leaves are thin almost like needles in Europe, but larger in China. However, when translating the conifer (柏) with "Platycladus Orientalis", European readers will always think of an exotic environment. This translation strategy is called "foreignization". In the original, mentioning the "conifer" was mainly to create an impression of ever green trees common in Qing China. Therefore, it is considerable to translate "柏", "柏树", "松柏树" with "conifer", a strategy called "localization". This makes sure that the European reader is not mislead and does not pay attention to unwanted details, but can follow the story line.
However, the "localization" of the law enforcement troops in the novel, who confiscate the Jia's families fortune and capture family members, fulfill functions like todays police in the West. However, to translate the law enforcement troops with "police" may astonish the readers at that place in the story, because it sounds modern. Therefore, the more foreignizing, even exoticizing term "gold jackets" may appear more appropriate. These kinds of choices have constantly to be made in the translation process and everybody may have a different opinion, what choices are the most appropriate, however, nobody frees the translator from the burden to make the choices. Important is, that a translator should never stick to his first choice for all of the different revised editions during his or her lifetime. A translator should always be open to suggestions from colleagues, Redology experts and readers. Therefore, to translate a word in one way may be a good choice in the 2000's and to translate it differently may be a good choice in the 2020's. It also depends on the targeted readers and what impression one wants to leave on them. If the targeted readers are Redologists, one can stick more to the original and give less explanations (foreignization), if the targeted readers are the masses, one may be freer and bring the text closer to the readers (localization).
3. What are the most troublesome translation problems encountered in translation? What are the cultural differences that cause them
Like escimos, who have several terms to describe "snow", there are some terms in Chinese who have more terms in Western languages so that the translator needs to decide. One of the more difficult tasks was that the term "姑娘", which is used not only by masters addressing their offspring, but also addressing their servants and even by the servants addressing female masters, like Lin Daiyu (e.g. chapter 82). So it needs to be translated into "Master", "daughter", "Miss" depending on who is using it to address whom. Sometimes one term in Chinese describes several different things in Western languages, so you have to decide as translators. Most troublesome is background knowledge of Chinese readers, especially with parts of Chinese characters referred to, motifs in poems, which refer back to a whole cosmos of earlier poems and stories they evoke in the Chinese readers minds. When Lin Daiyu quotes verses from the "West Chamber", Jia Baoyu immediately knows that she is in love with him. These subtle things need to be expressed between the lines, without that the Western readers know the "Romance of the Western Chamber".
Here are some examples, where further explanations in the text or annotations are helpful: In chapter 92, Baoyu mentions several historical female figures familiar to the Chinese reader, but not to the Western: "[...]班婕妤、蔡文姬、谢道韫诸人。" This became a very long translation in German: "die belesene Konkubine des Herrschers Tscheng-di von Han Ban Djie-yü und die zwei Dichterinnen Tsai Wën-dji und Hsie Dau-yün".
Troublesome are also culture-loaded words, like when names for Chinese clothing, Chinese dishes and customs are mentioned. Some of these terms are not totally clear even for Chinese readers. In these cases, the translation needs to give more explanations in order to keep the focus of the reader on the story and not to distract them with things, which were not intended to distract the original readers. Also superstitious beliefs (迷信) are mentioned at several places in the novel. Sometimes we have "false friends", e.g. when a witch is sticking needles into puppets. This is familiar to us with the witches tradition and the Woodoo cult. However, we can not simply use the familiar Western terms for it, because these cultural parallels have their local genuine traditions and may have developed independently from another or there have been some kind of cultural exchanges. In any case it is important to make differences clear and not to make the reader mix up things. Also that Jia Zheng in chapter 120 is not recognizing his son Jia Baoyu, who is somehow leaving the earthly world, is parallel to stories familiar to Western readers from the bible. However, even these paralells earn an appropriate translation in their local tradition and context to raise awareness for cultural traditions.
At one time, the clothes of the Prince of Beijing are referred to as he was wearing the 江牙海水五爪龙 pattern. Without explanations, Western readers may not know that the expression is colloquial for the pattern 海水江崖纹, which displays five claw dragons above troubled river water, and that this pattern was reserved for the emperor or the imperial family. Therefore mentioning this pattern detail of his clothes supports the high position and authority of the Prince of Beijing. A lot of clothes are described and many of them mix Manchu and Han culture, even Western materials and influences can be found. Many of the cultural items described in the novel are not genuinely Chinese, but found their present appearance through mixing and mingling. Cao Xueqin plays with the different cultures and even reduces hints to set his novel in Qing Dynasty. This is not only a way to create a timeless novel of eternal value, it shows the intercultural attitude and tolerancce of Cao Xueqin. Also within the Chinese culture, he was engaged to help the poor and the weak. This is a Chinese value, but it is also a common international value of human civilization throughout cultures.
4. Why do you care about modern Chinese literature?
In my view, the best Chinese literature ever written was Tang poetry (shi). Among prose literature, I like novels like the Red Chamber Dreams most. It is especially astonishing how modern this genre was 250 years ago. The 2nd best Chinese literature was Republican literature by Lu Xun and others in the 1920s. They not only mastered the difficult task to establish baihuawen as the new written form, but were totally free, learned from both traditional Chinese and Western literature, and wrote the best literature globally at that time. Lu Xun used similar experiments in his literature like Madman's diary, the true story of A Q etc., namely to put a fictional element into a realist setting, like Kafka with the "Metamorphosis". This peak of Chinese literature is unreached until today.
This is why I am more interested in premodern and modern Chinese literature than in the contemporary one. However, even though Chinese literature has lost quality when it took the path of the so-called "engaged literature" in 1927, putting political contents over literary quality, there are still extremely few but notable works of contemporary literature. These are worth to be translated. And I still hope that there will be more high quality literature in the future, which of course needs to learn from foreign literature (like Mo Yan learned from other Nobel Prize works) and which authors need to be able to speak several languages and travel the world. I am sure that in a future China, authors will be able to write freer again and therefore return to the top quality of literature produced in Tang Dynasty and in the 1920s.
Modern literature in China created simply some of the best works of literature in the world. Of course the quality deteriorated, when literature took the path of engaged literature in 1927. But before that was a time of experiments, iconoclasm, Zero-point-literature (the Chinese May Fourth literature has parallels to the German literature after World War II), and Breakup.
5. If the popular modern Chinese literature is a history of modern China, what do you think are the characteristics of contemporary Chinese literature?
In the meantime, master narrators tell us certain decades of Chinese history, Lao She's Tea House, Ba Jin's Family, Qian Zhongshu's Weicheng, Mao Dun's Ziye, Mo Yan's Life and Death are wearing me out, and in newer times Xu Zechen describes life in Haidian since the 1980's, Zhang Jie's Heavy Wings and Yu Hua's "Brothers" explain both sides of the medal of the Reform and Opening Policy.
Contemporary literature is documenting and presenting contemporay Chinese society. We lack the distance of time to evaluate what works of contemporary literature will be regarded as representative for today. Mandarin duck and butterfly literature (鸳鸯蝴蝶派) was the mainstream literature of the 1920s, but today we remember the rebellious baihua literature as being representative of that time.
So the literature appears more diverse today. However, reality itself appears also more diverse today, with people living next door without knowing each other, with people living in filter bubbles and losing the ability to judge what is real and what is fake, to listen, to discuss and to revise their own opinions.
Contemporary Chinese literature produces heros, we need more tragic heros. It follows the paths of affirmative, system stabilizing narratives. It misses alternative narratives, the voice of authoritative critical authors like Guenther Grass in Germany, which also in China was the original role of authors for millenia, but these authors are silent in today's China or have emigrated. According to statistics, Chinese are the most intelligent ethnicity in the world. So they should be generous enough to allow different voices according to the Chinese tradition of "harmonic but of a different opinion" (和而不同).
6. In your opinion, what are the reasons why contemporary works do not attract overseas audiences as much as they did in the past? Is there a gap between them and the classical Chinese literature?
The main difference between contemporary and modern Chinese authors is, that the contemporary ones do not read foreign literature on a daily basis, also because they don't know foreign languages any more. Mo Yan, who won the Nobel Prize, has done so, although he read other works which have won the Nobel Prize of literature in Chinese translation.
The main difference between classical authors and contemporary authors is, that contemporary authors are not trained all their life in letters. They do not work hard for several years to pass the Keju. Instead, they are silenced by the banalities of the everyday, they think about buying a flat etc. And of course they cannot be such free thinkers as their counterparts in ancient times, because they live in an extremely regulated, maybe even overregulated and short-living society. They also have less common ground, because the filter bubbles of different countries differ and even the filter bubbles within China.
The best of ancient Chinese literature, especially Tang poetry, is of timeless value, their authors have earned a place in eternity. The artistic transformation process was extremely long in ancient times, today authors may record their half-cooked thoughts by voice recorder and publish them online before they have finished their stumblings.
7. Apart from the well-known works of Lu Xun and Yu Qiuyu, do you have any criteria for selecting modern works for translation?
The most important reason to me is, if a story grabs me, and may also grab the readers of my target culture. Let me explain this with the following examples:
To see Cheng Tiansong grow up in the bank business and finally reading of his heroic and creative symbolic protest against foreign tea traders, when he dumped tea leaves into the Huangpu river is simply a joy to read in Ji Yu's Die Clans von Xin'an.
In Han Shaogong's collection of short stories Fading moon over the abandoned courtyard, we read through the eyes of different people. Impressive is the perspective of a person reading water meters in a house and explaining that in flat no. 5 a grandmother lived with her child and both died one after the other. Starting from the gap in the list of meter figures, the narrator explains that the flat is not rented out again because people fear the ghosts of the two women. The narrator describes, how he remembers the steps of the girl when she came home every night and writes: "Since these steps disappeared, I looked out of the window into the quiet night to the moon. It was as if something was missing in the night." Descriptions like this last in the mind of the readers.
Sometimes a story also touches me because it describes scenes familiar to me. The life of students and young graduates on and around the campus of Peking University described by Xu Zechen in Ah Beijing! matches my memories. The cohabiting of young people, the complex relations, work as cook and being a rebel poet, all of these seemingly weird constellations create a lively portray of Peking University campus. Therefore even readers who have never been there can feel the atmosphere there.
Zhang Wei is a master of dense atmosphere and magic-realistic description of nature. In his story Sea wind, published in the collection of short stories of the same title, the reader only from sudden appearance of certain characters (thin children with large stomachs etc.) realizes, that the country must be in a famine and that the protagonists of the story, who are experts in getting fish out of the sea and creating delicious fish soup, actually are the salvation for the people living further inland, who finally also come to the shore and are saved.
8. As you mentioned, the "exoticism" of a translated work is one of the reasons that attracts foreign readers to read it. Which other reasons are there? (For example, is the historical context of a novel also a reason?)
Curiosity is a common characteristic of readers all around the world. To discover something new or to experience it immersively, for example to dive into a different place and different time, is attractive. Places and times, which bear mystery, are attractive because of their exoticism. Places and times you adore are also attractive. These can be historical turning points or simply a country you like. China still has a long way to win the hearts of people around the world, but it will be successful the freer and the cleaner it becomes. China may revive their ancient virtues like to base things on merits, to consider criticism as constructive, to admit if one was wrong in ones history, to help the poor, the disadvantaged and the minorities, to put ones own language, culture and nation last, and to be humble. But when it will be successful, then there actually may come a new time of "Chinoiserie", where people in the world simply want to read more Chinese literature, because everything which is Chinese is considered "fancy".
9. After so many years of comparative research, what do you think are the differences and commonalities between the concerns of Chinese and Western literature?
The main difference is that Western literature is almost not restricted. Therefore Chinese Writers have a less fortunate starting point. Therefore it is even more remarkable if they produce a few pieces at the level of world literature.
Another main difference is that in Western literature, originality and creativity is appreciated more than rafinesse in expression.
If in Western literature governments or politics are mentioned, they are mostly mentioned in a negative way or criticized. In Chinese literature, the only criticism of governments you find is the one of foreign governments. This makes is sometimes impossible for a Western reader to continue reading, because the constant praise, especially in the category of propaganda literature, scares readers off.
Literature first of all is a way of human communication which bridges time, space and minds. The nation becomes less and less important as a category of literature. Today we have Chinese writers who write in Chinese in America or in English. We have 100 million people worldwide who learn Chinese and who may read the one or other piece of Chinese literature in its original language.
10. Literature is an important point of cultural exchange. Is it possible to break down the perceived bias between East and West through literary translation?
Literature is also an important point of exchange of lives. When you dive deep into a piece of Chinese literature, you even switch lifes with a Chinese protagonist. What is a better way to overcome prejudices than to be a part of another society and culture?
Not everybody has the means and time to travel to understand different cultures. Especially during the pandemic, we can instead watch a documentary or take a book.
In Europe, we have discovered that when there are no borders between countries who have fought each other as enemies in the second world war, that French people are almost totally like Germans etc. If no education tells you that you are different, you start from the common things. From the space, the earth seems one, with no borders. According to statistics, Chinese people are the most intelligent people on earth. From concepts of harmony, datong and the Chinese 56 ethnicities all united in the Chinese citizens, Chinese deeply feel, that Tibetans, Uighurs, people from Hong Kong, Taiwan and even oversea's Chinese in Singapore and the United States all are equal and earn dignity. And in this, they are equal with the ethnicities along the Belt and Road initiative and with all the different ethnicities around the world. Many people in the world expect China to be the new leader of the world. The world's eyes are on China now, how China treats its ethnicities and how it realizes the concepts of "he er bu tong".
I don't think that ordinary people have prejudices from the very beginning. When children grow up, they don't differentiate, classify and stigmatize. You can see that with the gender roles. If you dress a girl as a boy, people will play with her as with a boy, play soccer and give her car toys to play. If you explain to them that it was a girl, they apologize.
ENGLISH-CHINESE 对照
1 Do you visit the local area before translating a novel that is particularly localized?
Although there are also good translations of translators who have not visited the original sites, I think it is very important that the translator deeply immerses into the social-historical situation of the original. I met Jia Pingwa on Sep 21, 2014 in Xi'an and he showed me his home full of regional artefacts like wooden Taotie masks and explained the regional cultural roots of these artefacts to me. I have also heard from a lot of Chinese colleagues, who study foreign authors, that they visit the places of their works and their graves to get an impression of the atmosphere. A lot of actors dive into the life of the historical characters they are acting. 虽然不可否认，仍然有不少优秀的翻译作品其译者没有机会走访书中所述之处，但我个人认为，实地走访文中场景是十分重要的，这样译者可以深深的沉浸在原作所处的社会和历史环境中。2014年9月21日我在西安与贾平凹见面，他给我展示了他家里的木制饕餮面具等具有地区特色的收藏品，并向我解释了这些收藏品的地域文化根源。我也从许多研究外国作家的中国同事的口中得知，他们走访过原文的发生地，也走访过原文作者们的墓地，以此获得更深层的感受。许多演员也都潜心研究和体验他们所饰历史人物的生活。 I personally have spent as much time as I could on the traces of Cao Xueqin since when I was a student at Peking University. Very helpful were the Red Chamber Research Institute (中国艺术研究院红楼梦研究所), where I got the present of the Hongloumeng Dictionary 《红楼梦大辞典》, the Cao Xueqin Remembrance Site (曹雪芹纪念馆) at the foot of the Xiangshan, I have visted the reconstructed Daguanyuan (北京大观园), and the Gugong (故宫), have eaten some of the dishes presented in the novel and spent some time time in Nanking. 从在北京大学读书时起，我就尽量花费较多的时间研究曹雪芹的生平。中国艺术研究院红楼梦研究所给了我很多帮助，他们送给了我《红楼梦大辞典》，我还走访了位于香山脚下的曹雪芹纪念馆，也曾到访过重建的北京大观园，除此之外，还参观过故宫，品尝了小说里提及的各种菜肴，我也在南京待过一段时间。 The most I have learned from the diverse research literature in China and abroad and from attending Redology conferences in China, where the newest research results were presented by colleagues. I have read more about what was life like in the times of Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong and about Manchu culture, the Banner system. However, the main task is to take the readers by the hand and abduct to China 250 years back in time and to make the bustling life of that time become alive again. To bring the novel into today's world, I also participated in a project to recreate the novel in the form of a D Book, which is a pocket size book adding songs and video clips to the novel text with QR codes, visible on smart devices and also on Google glasses, one of the most successful items at the Frankfurt book fair. In this way, we could also win younger readers in Germany to read this Chinese classic. 我学到最多的是中国和国外的各种文学研究文献，以及参加中国的红学研讨会，同事们在会上分享最新的研究成果。我更多的读了关于康熙、雍正和乾隆时代的生活以及满族文化、八旗制度等。当然，我主要的任务是牵着读者的手，带他们穿越回250年前的中国，让那个时代的繁华生活重新变得鲜活。为了将这部小说带入当今世界，我还参与了一个项目，以D书的形式重现这部小说，这是一本袖珍书，在小说文本中加入歌曲和视频片段的二维码，在智能设备和谷歌眼镜上可见，是法兰克福书展上最成功的项目之一。通过这种方式，我们也可以赢得德国年轻读者来阅读这部中国经典作品。 I have done so similarly with Mian Mian's novel Panda Sex, I visited her in Shanghai and she showed me all the places who appear in the novel. What I found out there was, that the novel was actually a recording of her life. Similarly, I met Wang Meng on December 2, 1992 and several times later in Germany and at Harvard University. On May 25, 2009, I spoke with Han Han on the phone, I read his blogs, watched his films and TV series, when I translated three of his novels. I also introduced Han Han's interview to the German readers in the most important German newspaper. On September 12, 2009, I met Mo Yan in Frankfurt three years before he was awarded the Nobel Prize. I published an interview with him and introduced him more to German readers. All of these were only a tiny mosaic part of his promotion to be awarded the prize. I met Yu Hua in Beijing and was impressed, that this great author treated his translators without any airs and graces, but as equals. 我在翻译绵绵的小说《熊猫》时也曾做过类似的工作。我在上海拜访了她，她带我看了小说中出现的所有地方。我在那里发现，这部小说实际上是对她生活的记录。同样，我在1992年12月2日见到了王蒙，后来又在德国和哈佛大学见过几次。2009年5月25日，我与韩寒通了电话，我读了他的博客和杂志，看了他拍摄的电影，翻译了他的三部小说，还在德国最重要的报纸上向德国读者介绍了韩寒的访谈。2009年9月12日，在莫言获得诺贝尔奖三年之前，我在法兰克福见到了他。我发表了对他的采访，并向德国读者更多地介绍了他。这些只是他获得诺奖的很小的一块镶嵌。我在北京见到了余华，印象深刻的是，这位伟大的作家对待他的译者没有任何架子，而是平等相待。 Can you take the example of the Dream of the Red Chamber: How to avoid cultural gaps in the translation of ancient Chinese works?[edit] There are gaps in time and space. When Jia Baoyu addresses his grandmother, he does not call her "grandma", but "Jia Mu", the same with his father, mother, cousins etc., which are addressed with their absolute, not relative position, like "third master" etc. This is common 250 years ago in China, and it was common 250 years ago in Europe. So it is more a gap in time than in culture. Therefore, if the translator decides to follow the strategy of “communicative translation”, he may turn it into the direct form "grandma, father, mother" to make the text better understandable (localization). If one values the authenticity of the original and the last manuscript version of the author before publication, one can keep the original indirect addressing, making the text sound more distant and formal (foreignization) to today's readers. 《红楼梦》在时间和空间上存在着差距。当贾宝玉称呼他的祖母时，他不叫她 "奶奶"，而是叫 "贾母"，他的父亲、母亲、表兄弟等也是如此，他们如外人那样直呼其名，而不是因亲戚关系按照不同地位而有不同称谓，如 "三爷 "等。这在250年前的中国很常见，而在250年前的欧洲也很常见。所以与其说是文化上的差距，不如说是时间上的差距。因此，如果译者决定遵循“交际翻译”策略，他可以把它直接变成 "奶奶、爸爸、妈妈 "，使文本更好地被理解（本地化）。如果重视原作的真实性和作者出版前的最后一个手稿版本，可以保留原来的间接称呼，使文本在今天的读者听起来更遥远和正式（外国化）。 The language in the Red Chamber Dreams is more indirect, sexuality is mostly described with "the joy of clouds and rain". Minford has solved that problem by describing two scenes in more detail than they are described in the original. 《红楼梦》中的语言比较间接，性生活多以 "云雨之欢 "来描述。闵福德解决了这个问题，他对两个场景的描述比原著中的描述更详细。 Even the plants described in the novel are not so common in Europe. In Europe, the trees who keep their needle like green leaves even during the winter, are "conifers", with the "pine" as the most common sort. In China, the "Platycladus Orientalis", is seen most often. Both trees belong to the "coniferous" trees, the most obvious difference is that the leaves are thin almost like needles in Europe, but larger in China. However, when translating the conifer (柏) with "Platycladus Orientalis", European readers will always think of an exotic environment. This translation strategy is called "foreignization". In the original, mentioning the "conifer" was mainly to create an impression of ever green trees common in Qing China. Therefore, it is considerable to translate "柏", "柏树", "松柏树" with "conifer", a strategy called "localization". This makes sure that the European reader is not mislead and does not pay attention to unwanted details, but can follow the story line. 即使是小说中描述的植物，在欧洲也不那么常见。在欧洲，即使在冬季也能保持针状绿叶的树木是 "常绿乔木、常青树"，其中 "松树 "是最常见的一种。在中国，最常看到的是 "东方红"（Platycladus Orientalis）。这两种树都属于 "conifer(常绿乔木、常青树、松树)"，最明显的区别是，欧洲的叶子很薄，几乎像针叶，而中国的叶子则较大。然而，当用 "Platycladus Orientalis "来翻译柏树时，欧洲读者总是会想到一个异国的环境。这种翻译策略被称为 "外国化"。在原文中，提到 "松树"主要是为了给人留下清代中国常见的常青树的印象。因此，将"柏"、"柏树"、"松柏树 "翻译成 "conifer(松树)"是完全可以的，这种策略称为 "本地化"。这确保了欧洲读者不会被误导，不会注意到不需要的细节，而是能够跟随故事的脉络发展。 However, the "localization" of the law enforcement troops in the novel, who confiscate the Jia's families fortune and capture family members, fulfill functions like todays police in the West. However, to translate the law enforcement troops with "police" may astonish the readers at that place in the story, because it sounds modern. Therefore, the more foreignizing, even exoticizing term "gold jackets" may appear more appropriate. These kinds of choices have constantly to be made in the translation process and everybody may have a different opinion, what choices are the most appropriate, however, nobody frees the translator from the burden to make the choices. Important is, that a translator should never stick to his first choice for all of the different revised editions during his or her lifetime. A translator should always be open to suggestions from colleagues, Redology experts and readers. Therefore, to translate a word in one way may be a good choice in the 2000's and to translate it differently may be a good choice in the 2020's. It also depends on the targeted readers and what impression one wants to leave on them. If the targeted readers are Redologists, one can stick more to the original and give less explanations (foreignization), if the targeted readers are the masses, one may be freer and bring the text closer to the readers (localization). 然而，小说中的执法者被称为“锦衣军”，他们没收贾家的财产，抓捕家庭成员，履行了西方今天的警察职能。然而，用 "警察 "来翻译“锦衣军”这样“本土化”的名词可能会使读者感到惊讶，因为这听起来很现代。因此，更加外国化，甚至异国情调的术语“gold jackets”可能会显得更加合适。在整个翻译过程中，会不断需要译者去做出选择，每个人都可能有不同的意见，什么选择是最合适的？没有人把译者从做出选择的负担中解放出来。重要的是，译者在他或她的一生中，不应一直坚持他最初的选择，译者应始终对同事、红学专家和读者的建议持开放态度。因此，以一种方式翻译一个词，在2000年可能是一个好的选择，而以不同的方式翻译，在2020年可能是一个更好的选择。这也取决于目标读者以及译者希望给他们留下什么印象。如果目标读者是红学家，就可以更多地坚持原文，少做解释（外国化），如果目标读者是大众，就可以更自由，让文本更接近读者（本地化）。 3 What are the most troublesome translation problems encountered in translation? What are the cultural differences that cause them[edit] Like escimos, who have several terms to describe "snow", there are some terms in Chinese who have more terms in Western languages so that the translator needs to decide. One of the more difficult tasks was that the term "姑娘", which is used not only by masters addressing their offspring, but also addressing their servants and even by the servants addressing female masters, like Lin Daiyu (e.g. chapter 82). So it needs to be translated into "Master", "daughter", "Miss" depending on who is using it to address whom. Sometimes one term in Chinese describes several different things in Western languages, so you have to decide as translators. Most troublesome is background knowledge of Chinese readers, especially with parts of Chinese characters referred to, motifs in poems, which refer back to a whole cosmos of earlier poems and stories they evoke in the Chinese readers minds. When Lin Daiyu quotes verses from the "West Chamber", Jia Baoyu immediately knows that she is in love with him. These subtle things need to be expressed between the lines, without that the Western readers know the "Romance of the Western Chamber". 就像爱斯基摩人，他们有许多专门的词来描述 "雪"一样，有些中文词在西方语言中有更多不同对应的词，因此，译者需要做出决定。例如一个比较困难的点是，"姑娘 "这个词，不仅可以是主人对晚辈的称呼，也可以是对仆人的称呼，甚至是仆人对女主人的称呼，比如林黛玉（如第82章）。所以它需要被翻译成 "主人"、"女儿"、"小姐"，这取决于谁用它来称呼谁。有时一个汉语词语在西方语言中表示不同的几种东西，所以作为译者，你们必须做出决定。最棘手的是中国读者的背景知识，特别是提到的汉字的偏旁部首，还有如同宇宙那样丰富的早期诗词的边边角角），这些都牵动中国读者的神经。当林黛玉引用《西厢记》中的诗句时，贾宝玉立即知道她爱上了他。这些微妙的东西需要在字里行间表达出来，而不是让西方读者先知道《西厢记》。 Here are some examples, where further explanations in the text or annotations are helpful: In chapter 92, Baoyu mentions several historical female figures familiar to the Chinese reader, but not to the Western: "[...]班婕妤、蔡文姬、谢道韫诸人。" This became a very long translation in German: "die belesene Konkubine des Herrschers Tscheng-di von Han Ban Djie-yü und die zwei Dichterinnen Tsai Wën-dji und Hsie Dau-yün". 这里有例子，在文本中做出进一步的解释或注释，会更有助于理解：在第92章中，宝玉提到了几个中国读者熟悉的历史女性人物，但西方人并不熟悉。"[...]班婕妤、蔡文姬、谢道韫诸人。" 这在德语中成为一个很长的翻译："[...]汉成帝饱读诗书的嫔妃班婕妤，以及博学多才的两位女性诗人蔡文姬和谢道韫。("die belesene Konkubine des Herrschers Tscheng-di von Han Ban Djie-yü and die zwei Dichterinnen Tsai Wën-dji und Hsie Dau-yün")。 Troublesome are also culture-loaded words, like when names for Chinese clothing, Chinese dishes and customs are mentioned. Some of these terms are not totally clear even for Chinese readers. In these cases, the translation needs to give more explanations in order to keep the focus of the reader on the story and not to distract them with things, which were not intended to distract the original readers. Also superstitious beliefs (迷信) are mentioned at several places in the novel. Sometimes we have "false friends", e.g. when a witch is sticking needles into puppets. This is familiar to us with the witches tradition and the Woodoo cult. However, we can not simply use the familiar Western terms for it, because these cultural parallels have their local genuine traditions and may have developed independently from another or there have been some kind of cultural exchanges. In any case it is important to make differences clear and not to make the reader mix up things. Also that Jia Zheng in chapter 120 is not recognizing his son Jia Baoyu, who is somehow leaving the earthly world, is parallel to stories familiar to Western readers from the bible. However, even these paralells earn an appropriate translation in their local tradition and context to raise awareness for cultural traditions. 令人头疼的还有一些带有文化色彩的词汇，比如关于中国服装、中国菜肴和习俗的名称。其中一些专业术语即使对中国读者来说也不完全清楚。在这种情况下，译者需要给出更多的解释，以保持读者对故事的关注，而不是让他们分心，因为这些东西并不打算分散原文读者的注意力。另外，小说中多处提到了迷信（superstitious beliefs）。有时我们会有 "假友"，例如，当巫婆将针刺入布偶时，这是我们熟悉的女巫历史和巫毒崇拜。然而，我们不能简单地用熟悉的西方词语来形容它，因为这些文化上的相似之处有其当地的真正传统，可能是独立发展的，也可能是与某种文化交流形成。在任何情况下，重要的是要把差异说清楚，不要让读者把事情搞混。另外，第120章中的贾政认不出来他的儿子贾宝玉，而贾宝玉却以某种方式离开了尘世，这与西方读者熟悉的《圣经》中的故事是类似的。然而，即使是这些相似的故事，在当地的传统和背景下也能获得适当的翻译，以提高对文化传统的认知。 At one time, the clothes of the Prince of Beijing are referred to as he was wearing the 江牙海水五爪龙 pattern. Without explanations, Western readers may not know that the expression is colloquial for the pattern 海水江崖纹, which displays five claw dragons above troubled river water, and that this pattern was reserved for the emperor or the imperial family. Therefore mentioning this pattern detail of his clothes supports the high position and authority of the Prince of Beijing. A lot of clothes are described and many of them mix Manchu and Han culture, even Western materials and influences can be found. Many of the cultural items described in the novel are not genuinely Chinese, but found their present appearance through mixing and mingling. Cao Xueqin plays with the different cultures and even reduces hints to set his novel in Qing Dynasty. This is not only a way to create a timeless novel of eternal value, it shows the intercultural attitude and tolerancce of Cao Xueqin. Also within the Chinese culture, he was engaged to help the poor and the weak. This is a Chinese value, but it is also a common international value of human civilization throughout cultures. 有一次，北静王的衣服被称为穿着“江牙海水五爪龙”图案。如果没有解释，西方读者可能不知道这种说法是对海水江崖纹的俗称，即在混乱的江水上显示五爪龙，而这种图案是为皇帝或皇室保留的。因此，提到他衣服上的这一图案细节，支持了北静王的崇高地位和权威。书中描述了很多衣服，其中很多都混合了满族和汉族文化，甚至还可以找到西方的来源和影响。小说中描述的许多文化现象或产品并不是纯汉文化的，也不是纯满族文化的，而是通过混合和融合呈现在小说里。曹雪芹玩转不同的文化，甚至减少小说设定在清朝的暗示。这不仅是创造具有永恒价值的小说的一种方式，而且显示了曹雪芹的跨文化态度和宽容。在中国文化中，他还致力于帮助穷人和弱者。这是中国人的价值观，但也是整个人类文明共同的国际文化价值观。 4 Why do you care about modern Chinese literature?[edit] In my view, the best Chinese literature ever written was Tang poetry (shi). Among prose literature, I like novels like the Red Chamber Dreams most. It is especially astonishing how modern this genre was 250 years ago. The 2nd best Chinese literature was Republican literature by Lu Xun and others in the 1920s. They not only mastered the difficult task to establish baihuawen as the new written form, but were totally free, learned from both traditional Chinese and Western literature, and wrote the best literature globally at that time. Lu Xun used similar experiments in his literature like Madman's diary, the true story of A Q etc., namely to put a fictional element into a realist setting, like Kafka with the "Metamorphosis". This peak of Chinese literature is unreached until today. 在我看来，有史以来最好的中国文学是唐诗（shi）。在散文文学中，我最喜欢像《红楼梦》这样的小说。尤其令人惊讶的是，这种体裁在250年前是多么的现代。中国第二好的文学是鲁迅等人在20世纪20年代创作的民国文学。他们不仅主导了建立白话文作为新的书面形式的艰巨任务，而且完全自由，他们从中国传统文学和西方文学中学习，并写出了当时全球最好的文学作品。鲁迅在他的文学作品中，如《狂人日记》、《阿Q正传》等，也采用了类似的实验，即把虚构的元素放到现实主义的环境中，就像卡夫卡的《变形记》一样。中国文学的这一高峰直到今天还没有达到。 This is why I am more interested in premodern and modern Chinese literature than in the contemporary one. However, even though Chinese literature has lost quality when it took the path of the so-called "engaged literature" in 1927, putting political contents over literary quality, there are still extremely few but notable works of contemporary literature. These are worth to be translated. And I still hope that there will be more high quality literature in the future, which of course needs to learn from foreign literature (like Mo Yan learned from other Nobel Prize works) and which authors need to be able to speak several languages and travel the world. I am sure that in a future China, authors will be able to write freer again and therefore return to the top quality of literature produced in Tang Dynasty and in the 1920s. 这就是为什么我对中国前现代和现代文学比对当代文学更感兴趣。然而，尽管中国文学在1927年出现了所谓的“engaged literature”（可译为：方向文学），具体提出“文艺为工农大众服务"的文学方向，自此后的中国文学，几乎都遵循这个思路，即将政治内容置于文学质量之上，从而文学失去了本应有的力量和质量。当然，当代文学仍然还有极少值得关注的作品。这些作品是值得翻译的。而且我仍然希望将来会有更多高质量的文学作品，这当然需要向外国文学学习（就像莫言向其他诺贝尔奖作品学习一样），而且作者需要能够说几种语言，走遍世界。我相信，在未来的中国，作者将能够再次自由写作，从而恢复到唐代和20世纪20年代产生的顶级文学作品的质量。 Modern literature in China created simply some of the best works of literature in the world. Of course the quality deteriorated, when literature took the path of engaged literature in 1927. But before that was a time of experiments, iconoclasm, Zero-point-literature (the Chinese May Fourth literature has parallels to the German literature after World War II), and Breakup. 中国的现代文学创造了一些世界上最好的文学作品。当然，当文学在1927年走上“方向文学”的道路后，整体质量下滑。但在此之前，中国文学具有百废俱兴的特点（中国的五四文学与二战后的德国文学有相似之处），是一个破旧立新的新时代。 5 If the popular modern Chinese literature is a history of modern China, what do you think are the characteristics of contemporary Chinese literature?[edit] In the meantime, master narrators tell us certain decades of Chinese history, Lao She's Tea House, Ba Jin's Family, Qian Zhongshu's Weicheng, Mao Dun's Ziye, Mo Yan's Life and Death are wearing me out, and in newer times Xu Zechen describes life in Haidian since the 1980's, Zhang Jie's Heavy Wings and Yu Hua's "Brothers" explain both sides of the medal of the Reform and Opening Policy. 在此期间，大师级的叙述者告诉我们关于中国历史的某些年代，老舍的《茶馆》、巴金的《家》、钱钟书的《围城》、茅盾的《子夜》、莫言的《生死疲劳》，而在较近的时代，徐则臣描述了80年代以后的海淀生活，张洁的《沉重的翅膀》和余华的《兄弟》解释了改革开放政策的两面。 Contemporary literature is documenting and presenting contemporay Chinese society. We lack the distance of time to evaluate what works of contemporary literature will be regarded as representative for today. Mandarin duck and butterfly literature (鸳鸯蝴蝶派) was the mainstream literature of the 1920s, but today we remember the rebellious baihua literature as being representative of that time. 当代文学是记录和呈现当代中国社会的。我们缺乏时间的距离来评估哪些当代文学作品会被认为是今天的代表。鸳鸯蝴蝶派是20世纪20年代的主流文学，但今天我们记住了叛逆的白话文是那个时代的代表。 So the literature appears more diverse today. However, reality itself appears also more diverse today, with people living next door without knowing each other, with people living in filter bubbles and losing the ability to judge what is real and what is fake, to listen, to discuss and to revise their own opinions. 因此，今天的文学显得更加多样化。然而，现实本身在今天也显得更加多样化，人们住在隔壁，却互不相识，人们生活在过滤的泡沫中，失去了判断什么是真实和虚假的能力，失去了倾听、讨论和修正自己意见的能力。 Contemporary Chinese literature produces heros, we need more tragic heros. It follows the paths of affirmative, system stabilizing narratives. It misses alternative narratives, the voice of authoritative critical authors like Guenther Grass in Germany, which also in China was the original role of authors for millenia, but these authors are silent in today's China or have emigrated. According to statistics, Chinese are the most intelligent ethnicity in the world. So they should be generous enough to allow different voices according to the Chinese tradition of "harmonic but of a different opinion" (和而不同). 当代中国文学产生了英雄，我们需要更多的悲剧式英雄。它遵循着积极且中庸的叙述方式。它错过了替代性叙事，错过了像德国的君特·格拉斯（Guenther Grass）这样的权威批评家的声音，这在中国也是几千年来作家的原本角色，但这些作家在今天的中国都沉默了，或者已经移民了。据统计，中国人是世界上最聪明的民族。所以他们应该有足够的胸怀，根据中国 "和而不同 "的传统，允许不同的声音。 6 In your opinion, what are the reasons why contemporary works do not attract overseas audiences as much as they did in the past? Is there a gap between them and the classical Chinese literature?[edit] The main difference between contemporary and modern Chinese authors is, that the contemporary ones do not read foreign literature on a daily basis, also because they don't know foreign languages any more. Mo Yan, who won the Nobel Prize, has done so, although he read other works which have won the Nobel Prize of literature in Chinese translation. 中国当代作家和现代作家之间的主要区别是，当代作家并不每天阅读外国文学作品，有部分的原因是他们不懂外语。获得诺贝尔奖的莫言就是这样的，尽管他阅读了其他获得诺贝尔文学奖的中译本作品。 The main difference between classical authors and contemporary authors is, that contemporary authors are not trained all their life in letters. They do not work hard for several years to pass the Keju. Instead, they are silenced by the banalities of the everyday, they think about buying a flat etc. And of course they cannot be such free thinkers as their counterparts in ancient times, because they live in an extremely regulated, maybe even overregulated and short-living society. They also have less common ground, because the filter bubbles of different countries differ and even the filter bubbles within China. 古典作家与当代作家的主要区别在于，当代作家并非一生都在接受文学训练。他们不会为了通过科举考试而努力工作数年。相反，他们被日常的平淡生活所压抑，他们考虑的是买房子等等。当然，他们也不可能像古代的文人墨客那样成为自由的思想家，因为他们生活在一个极其规范，甚至可能是过度规范的社会，加上科技的便利，此时的文学作品多多少少有着昙花一现的危险。他们的共同点也比较少，因为不同国家的过滤泡沫不同，甚至中国内部的过滤泡沫也不同。 The best of ancient Chinese literature, especially Tang poetry, is of timeless value, their authors have earned a place in eternity. The artistic transformation process was extremely long in ancient times, today authors may record their half-cooked thoughts by voice recorder and publish them online before they have finished their stumblings. 中国古代文学的精华，尤其是唐诗，具有永恒的价值，它们的作者已经赢得了永恒的地位。在古代，艺术转化的过程是极其漫长的，今天的作者可能用录音机记录下他们半生不熟的想法，在他们磕磕绊绊的完成之前就在网上发表。 Apart from the well-known works of Lu Xun and Yu Qiuyu, do you have any criteria for selecting modern works for translation?[edit] The most important reason to me is, if a story grabs me, and may also grab the readers of my target culture. Let me explain this with the following examples: 对我来说，最重要的原因是，如果一个故事抓住了我，也可能抓住我的目标文化的读者。让我用下面的例子来解释。 To see Cheng Tiansong grow up in the bank business and finally reading of his heroic and creative symbolic protest against foreign tea traders, when he dumped tea leaves into the Huangpu river is simply a joy to read in Ji Yu's Die Clans von Xin'an. 看到程天送自小在银行业的环境下长大，最后读到他将茶叶倒入黄浦江，对外国茶商进行英雄式的、创造性的象征性抗议，这和在季宇的《新安家族》中简直是同一种阅读的乐趣。 In Han Shaogong's collection of short stories Fading moon over the abandoned courtyard, we read through the eyes of different people. Impressive is the perspective of a person reading water meters in a house and explaining that in flat no. 5 a grandmother lived with her child and both died one after the other. Starting from the gap in the list of meter figures, the narrator explains that the flat is not rented out again because people fear the ghosts of the two women. The narrator describes, how he remembers the steps of the girl when she came home every night and writes: "Since these steps disappeared, I looked out of the window into the quiet night to the moon. It was as if something was missing in the night." Descriptions like this last in the mind of the readers. 在韩少功的短篇小说集中，我们通过不同人的眼睛来阅读《空院残月》。令人印象深刻的是一个人在房子里读水表，并解释说在5号公寓里，一位奶奶和她的孩子住在一起，两人相继去世。对于水表刻度上的空白，叙述者解释说，由于人们害怕这两个女人的鬼魂，所以该公寓没有再租出去。叙述者描述了他如何记住女孩每天晚上回家时的台阶，并写道："一旦消失，夜深人静之时，我仰望泼入窗口的银月，会觉得夜晚缺失了什么"，像这样的描述在读者心中经久不衰。 Sometimes a story also touches me because it describes scenes familiar to me. The life of students and young graduates on and around the campus of Peking University described by Xu Zechen in Ah Beijing! matches my memories. The cohabiting of young people, the complex relations, work as cook and being a rebel poet, all of these seemingly weird constellations create a lively portray of Peking University campus. Therefore even readers who have never been there can feel the atmosphere there. 有时一个故事也会打动我，因为它描述了我熟悉的场景。徐则臣在《啊北京！》中描述的北京大学校园内外的学生和年轻毕业生的生活与我的记忆相吻合。故事里面，年轻人复杂的同居和三角恋爱关系，心怀诗人梦想的厨师等等，所有这些不易理解、似爱非爱的复杂情感关系构建了一幅幅生动的“北漂”形象。因此，即使没有去过那里的读者也能感受到那里的气氛。 Zhang Wei is a master of dense atmosphere and magic-realistic description of nature. In his story Sea wind, published in the collection of short stories of the same title, the reader only from sudden appearance of certain characters (thin children with large stomachs etc.) realizes, that the country must be in a famine and that the protagonists of the story, who are experts in getting fish out of the sea and creating delicious fish soup, actually are the salvation for the people living further inland, who finally also come to the shore and are saved. 张炜是描绘浓郁气氛和神奇自然的大师。在他发表于同名短篇小说集的故事《海边的风》中，读者仅从某些人物（例如：瘦弱的孩子有着大肚腩等）的突然出现就意识到，这个国家一定处于饥荒之中，故事中的主人公是从海里捞鱼和制作美味鱼汤的专家，他们实际上是对生活在内陆的人们的拯救，他们最终也来到了岸上，并得到了拯救。 8 As you mentioned, the "exoticism" of a translated work is one of the reasons that attracts foreign readers to read it. Which other reasons are there? (For example, is the historical context of a novel also a reason?)[edit] Curiosity is a common characteristic of readers all around the world. To discover something new or to experience it immersively, for example to dive into a different place and different time, is attractive. Places and times, which bear mystery, are attractive because of their exoticism. Places and times you adore are also attractive. These can be historical turning points or simply a country you like. China still has a long way to win the hearts of people around the world, but it will be successful the freer and the cleaner it becomes. China may revive their ancient virtues like to base things on merits, to consider criticism as constructive, to admit if one was wrong in ones history, to help the poor, the disadvantaged and the minorities, to put ones own language, culture and nation last, and to be humble. But when it will be successful, then there actually may come a new time of "Chinoiserie", where people in the world simply want to read more Chinese literature, because everything which is Chinese is considered "fancy". 好奇心是全世界读者的共同特征。“发现新大陆”或身临其境的阅读体验，好似进入一个全新时空，读者被其深深吸引。带有神秘感的地方和时间，因其异国情调而具有吸引力。你崇拜的地方和时间也是有吸引力的。这些可以是历史的转折点，也可以只是你喜欢的国家。中国要赢得全世界人民的心，还有很长的路要走，但它越是自由，越是干净，就会越成功。中国可能会恢复其古老的美德，如以事实为依据，将批评视为建设性的，承认自己在历史上的错误，帮助穷人、弱势群体和少数民族，将自己的语言、文化和民族放在最后，并保持谦逊。但是当它成功的时候，实际上可能会出现一个新的 "中国化 "的时代，世界上的人们只是想读更多的中国文学，因为所有中国的东西都被认为是 "花哨的"。 9 After so many years of comparative research, what do you think are the differences and commonalities between the concerns of Chinese and Western literature?[edit] The main difference is that Western literature is almost not restricted. Therefore Chinese Writers have a less fortunate starting point. Therefore it is even more remarkable if they produce a few pieces at the level of world literature. 主要的区别是，西方文学几乎没有限制。因此，中国作家的起点就不那么幸运了。因此，如果他们能写出几篇达到世界文学水平的作品，那就更了不起了。 Another main difference is that in Western literature, originality and creativity is appreciated more than rafinesse in expression. 另一个主要区别是，在西方文学中，人们对原创性和创造性的赞赏多于对精致的表达方式的肯定。 If in Western literature governments or politics are mentioned, they are mostly mentioned in a negative way or criticized. In Chinese literature, the only criticism of governments you find is the one of foreign governments. This makes is sometimes impossible for a Western reader to continue reading, because the constant praise, especially in the category of propaganda literature, scares readers off. 如果在西方文学中提到政府或政治，它们大多是以负面的方式被提及或被批评。在中国文学中，你能找到的对政府的批评只有对外国政府的批评。这使得西方读者有时无法继续阅读，因为不断的赞美，尤其是在宣传文学的范畴内，会吓跑读者。 Literature first of all is a way of human communication which bridges time, space and minds. The nation becomes less and less important as a category of literature. Today we have Chinese writers who write in Chinese in America or in English. We have 100 million people worldwide who learn Chinese and who may read the one or other piece of Chinese literature in its original language. 文学首先是人类交流的一种方式，它连接着时间、空间和思想。作为文学的一个类别，民族变得越来越不重要。今天，我们有中国作家在美国用中文或英文写作。我们在全世界有一亿人在学习中文，他们可能会用原文阅读一篇或另一篇中国文学作品。 10 Literature is an important point of cultural exchange. Is it possible to break down the perceived bias between East and West through literary translation?[edit] Literature is also an important point of exchange of lives. When you dive deep into a piece of Chinese literature, you even switch lifes with a Chinese protagonist. What is a better way to overcome prejudices than to be a part of another society and culture? 文学也是生命交流的一个重要节点。当你深入到一部中国文学作品中时，你甚至会和中国的主人公交换生命。有什么比成为另一个社会和文化的一部分更能克服偏见的方法呢？ Not everybody has the means and time to travel to understand different cultures. Especially during the pandemic, we can instead watch a documentary or take a book. 不是每个人都有能力和时间去旅行，了解不同的文化。特别是在新冠疫情期间，我们反而可以看一部纪录片或拿一本书。 In Europe, we have discovered that when there are no borders between countries who have fought each other as enemies in the second world war, that French people are almost totally like Germans etc. If no education tells you that you are different, you start from the common things. From the space, the earth seems one, with no borders. According to statistics, Chinese people are the most intelligent people on earth. From concepts of harmony, datong and the Chinese 56 ethnicities all united in the Chinese citizens, Chinese deeply feel, that Tibetans, Uighurs, people from Hong Kong, Taiwan and even oversea's Chinese in Singapore and the United States all are equal and earn dignity. And in this, they are equal with the ethnicities along the Belt and Road initiative and with all the different ethnicities around the world. Many people in the world expect China to be the new leader of the world. The world's eyes are on China now, how China treats its ethnicities and how it realizes the concepts of "he er bu tong". 在欧洲，我们发现，当那些在第二次世界大战中作为敌人互相厮杀的国家之间没有边界时，法国人几乎完全像德国人等等。如果没有教育告诉你，你是不同的，你就会从共同的东西开始。从太空中看，地球似乎是一个整体，没有边界。据统计，中国人是地球上最聪明的人。从和谐的概念来看，大同和中国56个民族都团结在一起成为中国公民是一样的道理，中国人深深感到，西藏人、维吾尔人、香港人、台湾人，甚至新加坡和美国的海外华人都是平等的，都有尊严。在这一点上，他们与 "一带一路 "倡议沿线的民族以及世界各地的所有不同民族是平等的。世界上许多人期望中国成为世界的新领袖。世界的目光现在都在关注中国，关注中国如何对待其各民族，如何实现 "和而不同 "的理念。 I don't think that ordinary people have prejudices from the very beginning. When children grow up, they don't differentiate, classify and stigmatize. You can see that with the gender roles. If you dress a girl as a boy, people will play with her as with a boy, play soccer and give her car toys to play. If you explain to them that it was a girl, they apologize. 我不认为普通人从一开始就有偏见。在孩童时代，他们不会进行区分、分类和污名化。你可以从性别角色中看到这一点。如果你把一个女孩打扮成男孩，人们会像对待男孩一样和她玩，踢足球，给她汽车玩具玩。如果你向他们解释那是个女孩，他们会道歉。
Notes
1 在翻译一部本土化气息特别浓的小说前，是否会到当地进行走访呢？
1 Do you visit the local area before translating a novel that is particularly localized?
Although there are also good translations of translators who have not visited the original sites, I think it is very important that the translator deeply immerses into the social-historical situation of the original. I met Jia Pingwa in Xi'an and he showed me his home full of regional artefacts like wooden masks and explained the regional cultural roots of these artefacts to me. I have also heard from a lot of Chinese colleagues, who study foreign authors, that they visit the places of their works and their graves to get an impression of the atmosphere. A lot of actors dive into the life of the historical characters they are acting. 虽然不可否认，仍然有不少优秀的翻译作品，其译者没有机会走访作品的发生地，但是我自己认为，走访作品发生地是十分重要的，这样译者可以深深的沉浸在原作所处的社会和历史环境中。我在西安与贾平凹见面， I personally have spent as much time as I could on the traces of Cao Xueqin since when I was a student at Peking University. Very helpful were the Red Chamber Research Institute (中国艺术研究院红楼梦研究所), where I got the present of the Hongloumeng Dictionary 《红楼梦大辞典》, the Cao Xueqin Remembrance Site (曹雪芹纪念馆) at the foot of the Xiangshan, I have visted the reconstructed Daguanyuan (北京大观园), and the Gugong (故宫), have eaten some of the dishes presented in the novel and spent some time time in Nanking. The most I have learned from the diverse research literature in China and abroad and from attending Redology conferences in China, where the newest research results were presented by colleagues. I have read more about what was life like in the times of Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong and about Manchu culture, the Banner system. However, the main task is to take the readers by the hand and abduct to China 250 years back in time and to make the bustling life of that time become alive again. To bring the novel into today's world, I also participated in a project to recreate the novel in the form of a D Book, which is a pocket size book adding songs and video clips to the novel text with QR codes, visible on smart devices and also on Google glasses, one of the most successful items at the Frankfurt book fair. In this way, we could also win younger readers in Germany to read this Chinese classic.
I have done so similarly with Mian Mian's novel Panda Sex, I visited her in Shanghai and she showed me all the places who appear in the novel. What I found out there was, that the novel was actually a recording of her life. Similarly, I met Wang Meng on December 2, 1992 and several times later in Germany and at Harvard University. On May 25, 2009, I spoke with Han Han on the phone, I read his blogs, watched his films and TV series, when I translated three of his novels. I also introduced Han Han's interview to the German readers in the most important German newspaper. On September 12, 2009, I met Mo Yan in Frankfurt three years before he was awarded the Nobel Prize. I published an interview with him and introduced him more to German readers. All of these and was a small mosaic part of his promotion to be awarded the prize. I met Yu Hua in Beijing and was impressed, that this great author treated his translators without any airs and graces, but as equals.
1 Besuchen Sie die lokale Umgebung, bevor Sie einen Roman übersetzen, der besonders lokalisiert ist?
Obwohl es auch gute Übersetzungen von Übersetzern gibt, die die Originalschauplätze nicht besucht haben, halte ich es für sehr wichtig, dass der Übersetzer tief in die sozialgeschichtliche Situation des Originals eintaucht. Ich traf Jia Pingwa in Xi'an und er zeigte mir sein Haus voller regionaler Artefakte wie Holzmasken und erklärte mir die regionalen kulturellen Wurzeln dieser Artefakte. Ich habe auch von vielen chinesischen Kollegen, die sich mit ausländischen Autoren beschäftigen, gehört, dass sie die Orte ihrer Werke und ihre Gräber besuchen, um einen Eindruck von der Atmosphäre zu bekommen. Viele Schauspieler tauchen in das Leben der historischen Figuren ein, die sie spielen.
Ich persönlich habe so viel Zeit wie möglich auf den Spuren von Cao Xueqin verbracht, seit ich Student an der Universität Peking war. Sehr hilfreich war dabei das Red Chamber Research Institute (中国艺术研究院红楼梦研究所), wo ich das Hongloumeng-Wörterbuch 《红楼梦大辞典》 geschenkt bekam, die Cao Xueqin-Gedenkstätte (曹雪芹纪念馆) am Fuße des Xiangshan, Ich habe das rekonstruierte Daguanyuan (北京大观园) und das Gugong (故宫) besichtigt, einige der im Roman vorgestellten Gerichte gegessen und einige Zeit in Nanking verbracht. Das meiste habe ich aus der vielfältigen Forschungsliteratur in China und im Ausland gelernt und aus der Teilnahme an Redology-Konferenzen in China, wo die neuesten Forschungsergebnisse von Kollegen vorgestellt wurden. Ich habe mehr darüber gelesen, wie das Leben zu Zeiten von Kangxi, Yongzheng und Qianlong aussah und über die Mandschu-Kultur, das Bannersystem. Die Hauptaufgabe besteht jedoch darin, die Leser an die Hand zu nehmen und nach China zu entführen, 250 Jahre zurück in die Vergangenheit, und das pulsierende Leben von damals wieder lebendig werden zu lassen. Um den Roman in die heutige Welt zu bringen, habe ich auch an einem Projekt teilgenommen, bei dem der Roman in Form eines D-Books neu aufgelegt wurde, einem Buch im Taschenformat, das den Text des Romans mit Liedern und Videoclips ergänzt und mit QR-Codes versehen ist, die auf Smart-Devices und auch auf Google-Brillen sichtbar sind, einem der erfolgreichsten Artikel auf der Frankfurter Buchmesse. Auf diese Weise konnten wir auch jüngere Leser in Deutschland für diesen chinesischen Klassiker gewinnen.
Ähnlich habe ich es mit Mian Mians Roman Panda Sex gemacht, ich habe sie in Shanghai besucht und sie hat mir alle Orte gezeigt, die in dem Roman vorkommen. Dabei habe ich herausgefunden, dass der Roman eigentlich eine Aufzeichnung ihres Lebens ist. In ähnlicher Weise traf ich Wang Meng am 2. Dezember 1992 und später mehrmals in Deutschland und an der Harvard University. Am 25. Mai 2009 habe ich mit Han Han telefoniert, seine Blogs gelesen, seine Filme und Fernsehserien gesehen und drei seiner Romane übersetzt. Außerdem habe ich den deutschen Lesern ein Interview mit Han Han in der wichtigsten deutschen Zeitung vorgestellt. Am 12. September 2009 traf ich Mo Yan in Frankfurt, drei Jahre bevor er den Nobelpreis erhielt. Ich habe ein Interview mit ihm veröffentlicht und ihn den deutschen Lesern näher vorgestellt. All das war ein kleiner Mosaikstein in seiner Werbung für die Verleihung des Preises. Ich habe Yu Hua in Peking getroffen und war beeindruckt, dass dieser große Autor seine Übersetzer ohne Starallüren, sondern auf Augenhöhe behandelt.
2 能否拿《红楼梦》举例，在翻译中国古代作品的时候，如何尽可能的避免翻译里面带来的文化空白问题？
Can you take the example of the Dream of the Red Chamber: How to avoid cultural gaps in the translation of ancient Chinese works?
There are gaps in time and space. When Jia Baoyu addresses his grandmother, he does not call her "grandma", but "Jia Mu", the same with his father, mother, cousins etc., which are addressed with their absolute, not relative position, like "third master" etc. This is common 250 years ago in China, and it was common 250 years ago in Europe. So it is more a gap in time than in culture. Therefore, if the translator decides to follow a communicative strategy, he may turn it into the direct form "grandma, father, mother" to make the text better understandable (localization). If one values the authenticity of the original and the last manuscript version of the author before publication, one can keep the original indirect addressing, making the text sound more distant and formal (foreignization) to today's readers.
The language in the Red Chamber Dreams is more indirect, sexuality is mostly described with "the play of clouds and rain". Minford has solved that problem by describing two scenes in more detail than they are described in the original.
Even the plants described in the novel are not so common in Europe. In Europe, the trees who keep their needle like green leaves even during the winter, are "conifers", with the "pine" as the most common sort. In China, the "Platycladus Orientalis", is seen most often. Both trees belong to the "coniferous" trees, the most obvious difference is that the leaves are thin almost like needles in Europe, but larger in China. However, when translating the conifer (柏) with "Platycladus Orientalis", European readers will always think of an exotic environment. This translation strategy is called "foreignization". In the original, mentioning the "conifer" was mainly to create an impression of ever green trees common in Qing China. Therefore, it is considerable to translate "柏", "柏树", "松柏树" with "conifer", a strategy called "localization". This makes sure that the European reader is not mislead and does not pay attention to unwanted details, but can follow the story line.
However, the "localization" of the law enforcement troops in the novel, who confiscate the Jia's families fortune and capture family members, fulfill functions like todays police in the West. However, to translate the law enforcement troops with "police" may astonish the readers at that place in the story, because it sounds modern. Therefore, the more foreignizing, even exoticizing term "gold jackets" may appear more appropriate. These kinds of choices have constantly to be made in the translation process and everybody may have a different opinion, what choices are the most appropriate, however, nobody frees the translator from the burden to make the choices. Important is, that a translator should never stick to his first choice for all of the different revised editions during his or her lifetime. A translator should always be open to suggestions from colleagues, Redology experts and readers. Therefore, to translate a word in one way may be a good choice in the 2000's and to translate it differently may be a good choice in the 2020's. It also depends on the targeted readers and what impression one wants to leave on them. If the targeted readers are Redologists, one can stick more to the original and give less explanations (foreignization), if the targeted readers are the masses, one may be freer and bring the text closer to the readers (localization).
Können Sie das Beispiel des Traums von der Roten Kammer nehmen: Wie lassen sich kulturelle Lücken bei der Übersetzung alter chinesischer Werke vermeiden?
Es gibt Lücken in Zeit und Raum. Wenn Jia Baoyu seine Großmutter anspricht, nennt er sie nicht "Großmutter", sondern "Jia Mu", dasselbe gilt für seinen Vater, seine Mutter, seine Cousins usw., die mit ihrer absoluten, nicht relativen Position angesprochen werden, wie "dritter Meister" usw. Dies war vor 250 Jahren in China üblich, und es war auch vor 250 Jahren in Europa üblich. Es handelt sich also eher um eine zeitliche als um eine kulturelle Lücke. Wenn sich der Übersetzer also für eine kommunikative Strategie entscheidet, kann er es in die direkte Form "Oma, Vater, Mutter" umwandeln, um den Text besser verständlich zu machen (Lokalisierung). Legt man Wert auf die Authentizität des Originals und der letzten Manuskriptversion des Autors vor der Veröffentlichung, kann man die ursprüngliche indirekte Anrede beibehalten, wodurch der Text für heutige Leser distanzierter und förmlicher klingt (Verfremdung).
Die Sprache in den Red Chamber Dreams ist indirekter, Sexualität wird meist mit dem "Spiel von Wolken und Regen" beschrieben. Minford hat dieses Problem gelöst, indem er zwei Szenen ausführlicher als im Original beschrieben hat.
Auch die im Roman beschriebenen Pflanzen sind in Europa nicht so verbreitet. In Europa sind die Bäume, die ihre nadelartigen grünen Blätter auch im Winter behalten, "Nadelbäume", wobei die "Kiefer" die häufigste Art ist. In China ist der "Platycladus Orientalis" am häufigsten anzutreffen. Beide Bäume gehören zu den "Nadelbäumen", der offensichtlichste Unterschied ist, dass die Blätter in Europa dünn, fast wie Nadeln sind, in China jedoch größer. Bei der Übersetzung des Nadelbaums (柏) mit "Platycladus Orientalis" werden europäische Leser jedoch immer an eine exotische Umgebung denken. Diese Übersetzungsstrategie wird als "Verfremdung" bezeichnet. Im Original diente die Erwähnung der "Konifere" hauptsächlich dazu, den Eindruck von immergrünen Bäumen zu erwecken, die im China der Qing-Zeit üblich waren. Daher ist es sinnvoll, "柏", "柏树", "松柏树" mit "Nadelbaum" zu übersetzen, eine Strategie, die "Lokalisierung" genannt wird. Dadurch wird sichergestellt, dass der europäische Leser nicht in die Irre geführt wird und nicht auf unerwünschte Details achtet, sondern der Handlung folgen kann.
Die "Lokalisierung" der Ordnungskräfte im Roman, die das Vermögen der Familie Jia konfiszieren und Familienmitglieder gefangen nehmen, erfüllt jedoch die Funktionen der heutigen Polizei im Westen. Die Gesetzeshüter mit "Polizei" zu übersetzen, könnte jedoch die Leser an dieser Stelle der Geschichte verwundern, weil es modern klingt. Daher erscheint der eher verfremdende, ja exotisierende Begriff "Goldjacken" vielleicht angemessener. Solche Entscheidungen müssen im Übersetzungsprozess immer wieder getroffen werden, und jeder mag eine andere Meinung darüber haben, welche Wahl die geeignetste ist, aber niemand entbindet den Übersetzer von der Pflicht, diese Entscheidungen zu treffen. Wichtig ist, dass ein Übersetzer nie bei seiner ersten Wahl für alle verschiedenen überarbeiteten Ausgaben seines Lebens bleiben sollte. Ein Übersetzer sollte immer offen für Vorschläge von Kollegen, Redologieexperten und Lesern sein. Daher kann es in den 2000er Jahren eine gute Wahl sein, ein Wort auf eine bestimmte Weise zu übersetzen, und in den 2020er Jahren kann es eine gute Wahl sein, es anders zu übersetzen. Es hängt auch davon ab, an welche Leser man sich wendet und welchen Eindruck man bei ihnen hinterlassen möchte. Handelt es sich bei der Zielgruppe um Redologen, kann man sich mehr an das Original halten und weniger Erklärungen geben (Fremdsprachigkeit), handelt es sich bei der Zielgruppe um die breite Masse, kann man freier sein und den Text den Lesern näher bringen (Lokalisierung).
3 在翻译中遇到的最麻烦的翻译问题会是哪一类？是由于什么方面的文化差异造成的呢？
Culture-loaded words 文化负载词 饮食、服装、迷信相关的词句
中西文化各方面的差异
3 What are the most troublesome translation problems encountered in translation? What are the cultural differences that cause them
Like escimos, who have several terms to describe "snow", there are some terms in Chinese who have more terms in Western languages so that the translator needs to decide. One of the more difficult tasks was that the term "姑娘", which is used not only by masters addressing their offspring, but also addressing their servants and even by the servants addressing female masters, like Lin Daiyu (e.g. chapter 82). So it needs to be translated into "Master", "daughter", "Miss" depending on who is using it to address whom. Sometimes one term in Chinese describes several different things in Western languages, so you have to decide as translators. Most troublesome is background knowledge of Chinese readers, especially with parts of Chinese characters referred to, motifs in poems, which refer back to a whole cosmos of earlier poems and stories they evoke in the Chinese readers minds. When Lin Daiyu quotes verses from the "West Chamber", Jia Baoyu immediately knows that she is in love with him. These subtle things need to be expressed between the lines, without that the Western readers know the "Romance of the Western Chamber".
Here are some examples, where further explanations in the text or annotations are helpful: In chapter 92, Baoyu mentions several historical female figures familiar to the Chinese reader, but not to the Western: "[...]班婕妤、蔡文姬、谢道韫诸人。" This became a very long translation in German: "die belesene Konkubine des Herrschers Tscheng-di von Han Ban Djie-yü und die zwei Dichterinnen Tsai Wën-dji und Hsie Dau-yün".
Troublesome are also culture-loaded words, like when names for Chinese clothing, Chinese dishes and customs are mentioned. Some of these terms are not totally clear even for Chinese readers. In these cases, the translation needs to give more explanations in order to keep the focus of the reader on the story and not to distract them with things, which were not intended to distract the original readers. Also superstitious beliefs (迷信) are mentioned at several places in the novel. Sometimes we have "false friends", e.g. when a witch is sticking needles into puppets. This is familiar to us with the witches tradition and the Woodoo cult. However, we can not simply use the familiar Western terms for it, because these cultural parallels have their local genuine traditions and may have developed independently from another or there have been some kind of cultural exchanges. In any case it is important to make differences clear and not to make the reader mix up things. Also that Jia Zheng in chapter 120 is not recognizing his son Jia Baoyu, who is somehow leaving the earthly world, is parallel to stories familiar to Western readers from the bible. However, even these paralells earn an appropriate translation in their local tradition and context to raise awareness for cultural traditions.
At one time, the clothes of the Prince of Beijing are referred to as wearing the 江牙海水五爪龙 pattern. Without explanations, Western readers may not know that the expression is colloquial for the pattern 海水江崖纹, which displays five claw dragons above troubled river water, and that this pattern was reserved for the emperor or the imperial family. Therefore mentioning this pattern detail of his clothes supports the high position and authority of the Prince of Beijing. A lot of clothes are described and many of them mix Manchu and Han culture, even Western materials and influences can be found. Many of the cultural items described in the novel are not genuinely Chinese, but found their present appearance through mixing and mingling. Cao Xueqin plays with the different cultures and even reduces hints to set his novel in Qing Dynasty. This is not only a way to create a timeless novel of eternal value, it shows the intercultural attitude and tolerancce of Cao Xueqin. Also within the Chinese culture, he was engaged to help the poor and the weak. This is a Chinese value, but it is also a common international value of human civilization throughout cultures.
3 Was sind die lästigsten Probleme bei der Übersetzung? Was sind die kulturellen Unterschiede, die sie verursachen
Wie bei den Eskimos, für die es mehrere Begriffe zur Beschreibung von "Schnee" gibt, gibt es im Chinesischen einige Begriffe, für die es in westlichen Sprachen mehrere Begriffe gibt, so dass der Übersetzer eine Entscheidung treffen muss. Eine der schwierigeren Aufgaben war der Begriff "姑娘", der nicht nur von Herren verwendet wird, die ihre Nachkommen ansprechen, sondern auch von ihren Dienern und sogar von den Dienern, die weibliche Herren ansprechen, wie Lin Daiyu (z. B. Kapitel 82). Es muss also mit "Meister", "Tochter" oder "Fräulein" übersetzt werden, je nachdem, wer wen damit anspricht. Manchmal beschreibt ein Begriff im Chinesischen mehrere verschiedene Dinge in westlichen Sprachen, so dass Sie als Übersetzer entscheiden müssen. Am problematischsten ist das Hintergrundwissen der chinesischen Leser, vor allem, wenn auf Teile chinesischer Schriftzeichen Bezug genommen wird, auf Motive in Gedichten, die auf einen ganzen Kosmos früherer Gedichte und Geschichten verweisen, die sie in den Köpfen der chinesischen Leser hervorrufen. Wenn Lin Daiyu Verse aus der "Westkammer" zitiert, weiß Jia Baoyu sofort, dass sie in ihn verliebt ist. Diese subtilen Dinge müssen zwischen den Zeilen ausgedrückt werden, ohne dass die westlichen Leser die "Romanze der Westlichen Kammer" kennen.
Hier sind einige Beispiele, bei denen weitere Erklärungen im Text oder Anmerkungen hilfreich sind: In Kapitel 92 erwähnt Baoyu mehrere historische Frauenfiguren, die dem chinesischen Leser bekannt sind, dem westlichen aber nicht: "[...]班婕妤、蔡文姬、谢道韫诸人。" Daraus wurde eine sehr lange Übersetzung ins Deutsche: "die belesene Konkubine des Herrschers Tscheng-di von Han Ban Djie-yü und die zwei Dichterinnen Tsai Wën-dji und Hsie Dau-yün".
Problematisch sind auch kulturell aufgeladene Wörter, etwa wenn Namen für chinesische Kleidung, chinesische Gerichte und Bräuche genannt werden. Einige dieser Begriffe sind selbst für chinesische Leser nicht ganz klar. In diesen Fällen muss die Übersetzung mehr Erklärungen geben, um den Fokus des Lesers auf der Geschichte zu halten und ihn nicht mit Dingen abzulenken, die den ursprünglichen Leser nicht ablenken sollten. Auch abergläubischer Glaube (迷信) wird an mehreren Stellen des Romans erwähnt. Manchmal haben wir "falsche Freunde", z. B. wenn eine Hexe Nadeln in Puppen sticht. Das ist uns aus der Hexentradition und dem Woodoo-Kult vertraut. Wir können jedoch nicht einfach die vertrauten westlichen Begriffe dafür verwenden, denn diese kulturellen Parallelen haben ihre eigenen authentischen Traditionen und können sich unabhängig voneinander entwickelt haben oder es gab eine Art kulturellen Austausch. In jedem Fall ist es wichtig, die Unterschiede deutlich zu machen und den Leser nicht zu verwechseln. Auch dass Jia Zheng in Kapitel 120 seinen Sohn Jia Baoyu nicht erkennt, der irgendwie die irdische Welt verlässt, ist eine Parallele zu Geschichten, die dem westlichen Leser aus der Bibel bekannt sind. Aber auch diese Parallelen verdienen eine angemessene Übersetzung in ihrer lokalen Tradition und ihrem Kontext, um das Bewusstsein für kulturelle Traditionen zu schärfen.
So wird die Kleidung des Prinzen von Peking einmal als 江牙海水五爪龙-Muster bezeichnet. Ohne Erklärungen wissen westliche Leser vielleicht nicht, dass der Ausdruck umgangssprachlich für das Muster 海水江崖纹 steht, das fünf Krallendrachen über unruhigem Flusswasser zeigt, und dass dieses Muster dem Kaiser oder der kaiserlichen Familie vorbehalten war. Die Erwähnung dieses Musters an seiner Kleidung unterstreicht daher die hohe Stellung und Autorität des Prinzen von Peking. Es wird eine Vielzahl von Kleidungsstücken beschrieben, und viele von ihnen sind eine Mischung aus Mandschu- und Han-Kultur, sogar westliche Materialien und Einflüsse sind zu finden. Viele der im Roman beschriebenen Kulturgüter sind keine echten Chinesen, sondern haben ihr heutiges Aussehen durch Vermischung und Vermengung erhalten. Cao Xueqin spielt mit den verschiedenen Kulturen und macht sogar Andeutungen, dass sein Roman in der Qing-Dynastie spielt. Dies ist nicht nur eine Möglichkeit, einen zeitlosen Roman von ewigem Wert zu schaffen, sondern zeigt auch die interkulturelle Einstellung und Toleranz von Cao Xueqin. Auch innerhalb der chinesischen Kultur engagierte er sich für die Armen und Schwachen. Dies ist ein chinesischer Wert, aber auch ein gemeinsamer internationaler Wert der menschlichen Zivilisation in allen Kulturen.
4 为什么会关注中国的近现代文学？
4 Why do you care about modern Chinese literature?
In my view, the best Chinese literature ever written was Tang poetry (shi). Among prose literature, I like novels like the Red Chamber Dreams most. It is especially astonishing how modern this genre was 250 years ago. The 2nd best Chinese literature was Republican literature by Lu Xun and others in the 1920s. They not only mastered the difficult task to establish baihuawen as the new written form, but were totally free, learned from both traditional Chinese and Western literature, and wrote the best literature globally at that time. Lu Xun used similar experiments in his literature like Madman's diary, the true story of A Q etc., namely to put a fictional element into a realist setting, like Kafka with the "Metamorphosis". This peak of Chinese literature is unreached until today.
This is why I am more interested in premodern and modern Chinese literature than in the contemporary one. However, even though Chinese literature has lost quality when it took the path of the so-called "engaged literature" in 1927, putting political contents over literary quality, there are still extremely few but notable works of contemporary literature. These are worth to be translated. And I still hope that there will be more high quality literature in the future, which of course needs to learn from foreign literature (like Mo Yan learned from other Nobel Prize works) and which authors need to be able to speak several languages and travel the world. I am sure that in a future China, authors will be able to write freer again and therefore return to the top quality of literature produced in Tang Dynasty and in the 1920s.
Modern literature in China created simply some of the best works of literature in the world. Of course the quality deteriorated, when literature took the path of engaged literature in 1927. But before that was a time of experiments, iconoclasm, Zero-point-literature (the Chinese May Fourth literature has parallels to the German literature after World War II), and Breakup.
4 Warum interessieren Sie sich für moderne chinesische Literatur?
Die beste chinesische Literatur, die je geschrieben wurde, ist meiner Meinung nach die Tang-Dichtung (shi). Von der Prosa-Literatur mag ich Romane wie die Träume der Roten Kammer am liebsten. Es ist besonders erstaunlich, wie modern dieses Genre vor 250 Jahren war. Die zweitbeste chinesische Literatur war die republikanische Literatur von Lu Xun und anderen in den 1920er Jahren. Sie meisterten nicht nur die schwierige Aufgabe, das Baihuawen als neue Schriftform zu etablieren, sondern waren auch völlig frei, lernten sowohl von der traditionellen chinesischen als auch von der westlichen Literatur und schrieben die beste Literatur der Welt zu dieser Zeit. Lu Xun wandte in seiner Literatur ähnliche Experimente an, wie z. B. das Tagebuch des Verrückten, die wahre Geschichte von A Q usw., nämlich ein fiktionales Element in ein realistisches Umfeld zu setzen, wie Kafka in der "Metamorphose". Dieser Gipfel der chinesischen Literatur ist bis heute unerreicht.
Aus diesem Grund interessiere ich mich mehr für die vormoderne und moderne chinesische Literatur als für die zeitgenössische. Doch auch wenn die chinesische Literatur an Qualität verloren hat, als sie 1927 den Weg der so genannten "engagierten Literatur" einschlug und politische Inhalte über literarische Qualität stellte, gibt es doch noch sehr wenige, aber bemerkenswerte Werke der zeitgenössischen Literatur. Diese sind es wert, übersetzt zu werden. Und ich hoffe immer noch, dass es in Zukunft mehr hochwertige Literatur geben wird, die natürlich von ausländischer Literatur lernen muss (wie Mo Yan von anderen Nobelpreiswerken) und deren Autoren mehrere Sprachen sprechen und die Welt bereisen müssen. Ich bin sicher, dass in einem zukünftigen China die Autoren wieder freier schreiben können und somit zu der Spitzenqualität der Literatur aus der Tang-Dynastie und den 1920er Jahren zurückkehren werden.
Die moderne Literatur in China hat einfach einige der besten Literaturwerke der Welt hervorgebracht. Natürlich verschlechterte sich die Qualität, als die Literatur 1927 den Weg der engagierten Literatur einschlug. Aber davor gab es eine Zeit der Experimente, des Bildersturms, der Nullpunkt-Literatur (4. Mai ähnlich wie die deutsche Literatur nach dem 2. Weltkrieg), des Aufbruchs etc.
5 如果讲广受欢迎的中国近代文学是一部中国近代史的话，你认为中国当代文学作品有什么特点？
5 If the popular modern Chinese literature is a history of modern China, what do you think are the characteristics of contemporary Chinese literature?
In the meantime, master narrators tell us certain decades of Chinese history, Lao She's Tea House, Ba Jin's Family, Qian Zhongshu's Weicheng, Mao Dun's Ziye, Mo Yan's Life and Death are wearing me out, and in newer times Xu Zechen describes life in Haidian since the 1980's, Zhang Jie's Heavy Wings and Yu Hua's "Brothers" explain both sides of the medal of the Reform and Opening Policy.
Contemporary literature is documenting and presenting contemporay Chinese society. We lack the distance of time to evaluate what works of contemporary literature will be regarded as representative for today. Mandarin duck and butterfly literature (鸳鸯蝴蝶派) was the mainstream literature of the 1920s, but today we remember the rebellious baihua literature as being representative of that time.
So the literature appears more diverse today. However, reality itself appears also more diverse today, with people living next door without knowing each other, with people living in filter bubbles and losing the ability to judge what is real and what is fake, to listen, to discuss and to revise their own opinions.
Contemporary Chinese literature produces heros, we need more tragic heros. It follows the paths of affirmative, system stabilizing narratives. It misses alternative narratives, the voice of authoritative critical authors like Guenther Grass in Germany, which also in China was the original role of authors for millenia, but these authors are silent in today's China or have emigrated. According to statistics, Chinese are the most intelligent ethnicity in the world. So they should be generous enough to allow different voices according to the Chinese tradition of "harmonic but of a different opinion" (和而不同).
5 Wenn die populäre moderne chinesische Literatur eine Geschichte des modernen China ist, was sind dann Ihrer Meinung nach die Merkmale der zeitgenössischen chinesischen Literatur?
Inzwischen erzählen uns Meistererzähler bestimmte Jahrzehnte der chinesischen Geschichte, Lao She's Tea House, Ba Jin's Family, Qian Zhongshu's Weicheng, Mao Dun's Ziye, Mo Yan's Life and Death are wearing me out, und in neuerer Zeit beschreibt Xu Zechen das Leben in Haidian seit den 1980er Jahren, Zhang Jie's Heavy Wings und Yu Hua's "Brothers" erklären beide Seiten der Medaille der Reform- und Öffnungspolitik.
Die zeitgenössische Literatur dokumentiert und präsentiert die chinesische Gesellschaft der Gegenwart. Uns fehlt der zeitliche Abstand, um zu beurteilen, welche Werke der Gegenwartsliteratur als repräsentativ für die heutige Zeit angesehen werden können. Die mandarinfarbene Enten- und Schmetterlingsliteratur (鸳鸯蝴蝶派) war die tiefe L-Literatur der 1920er Jahre, aber heute erinnern wir uns an die rebellische Baihua-Literatur als repräsentativ für diese Zeit.
So erscheint die Literatur heute vielfältiger. Aber auch die Realität selbst erscheint heute vielfältiger, mit Menschen, die nebeneinander wohnen, ohne sich zu kennen, mit Menschen, die in Filterblasen leben und die Fähigkeit verloren haben, zu beurteilen, was echt und was unecht ist, zuzuhören, zu diskutieren und ihre eigene Meinung zu revidieren.
Die zeitgenössische chinesische Literatur bringt Helden hervor, wir brauchen mehr tragische Helden. Sie folgt den Pfaden der affirmativen, systemstabilisierenden Erzählungen. Sie lässt alternative Erzählungen vermissen, die Stimme maßgeblicher kritischer Autoren wie Günther Grass in Deutschland, was auch in China seit Jahrtausenden die ursprüngliche Rolle von Autoren war, aber diese Autoren schweigen im heutigen China oder sind emigriert. Laut Statistik sind die Chinesen die intelligenteste Ethnie der Welt. Sie sollten also großzügig genug sein, andere Stimmen zuzulassen, gemäß der chinesischen Tradition der "harmonischen, aber anderen Meinung" (和而不同).
Notes
（一）现代文学与传统文学的冲突与承传 中国现代文学是在五四时期新的历史条件下产生的，它体现出全新的现代社会、现代人生的精神风貌和崭新的文学表述方式，但它也是几千年中国传统文学发展演进的必然结果。中国现代文学的出现即体现了现代新文学、新文化与传统旧文学、旧文化的根本冲突和根本转折。同时，中国现代文学与它几千年的文学母体也有着难以分割的联系。对传统的反叛往往是创造与更新的重要手段，而对传统精神的批判继承则是继往开来的重要规律。 （二）中外文学的相互交融 五四时期外国文学在中国的译介、传播和影响，对中国现代文学的诞生和发展起到了积极作用，有一些新文学的作家作品甚至是在外国文学的直接影响下出现的。中国现代文学充分吸收了外来各国文学与文化的发展因素。整个中国新文学的形成与世界文学大潮的冲击有着密切关联。 （三）伴随始终的使命感和责任感 时代历史所赋予中国现代文学的特殊使命，使之出现了一大批世纪性的大家与名作，并在整体上形成了自己特有的风格。中国现代文学虽然仅有短短三十年的创作历程，但大家纷涌，名作四起，还出现了一批个性鲜明、风格独特的创作流派。中国现代文学在整体上形成了自己的根本特质：这就是责任感、使命感以及对艺术境界的不懈追寻。这种特质使中国现代文学在思想和艺术上都达到了很高的水准。
6 当代作品没有像过去那样吸引到海外观众，在您看来原因是什么呢？它们是否和中国的古典文学有差距？
6 In your opinion, what are the reasons why contemporary works do not attract overseas audiences as much as they did in the past? Is there a gap between them and the classical Chinese literature?
The main difference between contemporary and modern Chinese authors is, that the contemporary ones do not read foreign literature on a daily basis, also because they don't know foreign languages any more. Mo Yan, who won the Nobel Prize, has done so, although he read other works which have won the Nobel Prize of literature in Chinese translation.
The main difference between classical authors and contemporary authors is, that contemporary authors are not trained all their life in letters. They do not work hard for several years to pass the Keju. Instead, they are silenced by the banalities of the everyday, they think about buying a flat etc. And of course they cannot be such free thinkers as their counterparts in ancient times, because they live in an extremely regulated, maybe even overregulated and short-living society. They also have less common ground, because the filter bubbles of different countries differ and even the filter bubbles within China.
The best of ancient Chinese literature, especially Tang poetry, is of timeless value, their authors have earned a place in eternity. The artistic transformation process was extremely long in ancient times, today authors may record their half-cooked thoughts by voice recorder and publish them online before they have finished their stumblings.
6 Was sind Ihrer Meinung nach die Gründe dafür, dass zeitgenössische Werke das Publikum im Ausland nicht mehr so sehr anziehen wie früher? Gibt es eine Kluft zwischen ihnen und der klassischen chinesischen Literatur?
Der Hauptunterschied zwischen zeitgenössischen und modernen chinesischen Autoren besteht darin, dass die zeitgenössischen Autoren nicht täglich ausländische Literatur lesen, auch weil sie keine Fremdsprachen mehr beherrschen. Mo Yan, der den Nobelpreis erhalten hat, hat dies getan, obwohl er andere Werke, die den Nobelpreis für Literatur erhalten haben, in chinesischer Übersetzung gelesen hat.
Der Hauptunterschied zwischen klassischen Autoren und zeitgenössischen Autoren besteht darin, dass zeitgenössische Autoren nicht ihr ganzes Leben lang für das Schreiben ausgebildet werden. Sie arbeiten nicht mehrere Jahre lang hart, um das Keju zu bestehen. Stattdessen werden sie von den Banalitäten des Alltags zum Schweigen gebracht, sie denken über den Kauf einer Wohnung nach usw. Und natürlich können sie nicht so frei denken wie ihre Pendants in der Antike, denn sie leben in einer extrem regulierten, vielleicht sogar überregulierten und kurzlebigen Gesellschaft. Sie haben auch weniger Gemeinsamkeiten, weil die Filterblasen der verschiedenen Länder und sogar die Filterblasen innerhalb Chinas unterschiedlich sind.
Das Beste der alten chinesischen Literatur, insbesondere die Tang-Dichtung, ist von zeitlosem Wert, ihre Autoren haben sich einen Platz in der Ewigkeit verdient. Der künstlerische Transformationsprozess war in der Antike extrem langwierig, heute können Autoren ihre halbgaren Gedanken mit einem Diktiergerät aufzeichnen und sie online veröffentlichen, bevor sie ihre Gedankengänge beendet haben.
7 除去鲁迅、余秋雨等人的知名作品，你在挑选近现代翻译作品的时候有什么标准吗？
Apart from the well-known works of Lu Xun and Yu Qiuyu, do you have any criteria for selecting modern works for translation?
The most important reason to me is, if a story grabs me, and may also grab the readers of my target culture. Let me explain this with the following examples:
To see Cheng Tiansong grow up in the bank business and finally reading of his heroic and creative symbolic protest against foreign tea traders, when he dumped tea leafs into the Huangpu river is simply a joy to read in Ji Yu's Die Clans von Xin'an.
In Han Shaogong's collection of short stories Fading moon over the abandoned courtyard, we read through the eyes of different people. Impressive is the perspective of a person reading water meters in a house and explaining that in flat no. 5 a grandmother lived with her child and both died one after the other. Starting from the gap in the list of meter figures, the narrator explains that the flat is not rented out again because people fear the ghosts of the two women. The narrator describes, how he remembers the steps of the girl when she came home every night and writes: "Since these steps disappeared, I looked out of the window into the quiet night to the moon. It was as if something was missing in the night." Descriptions like this last in the mind of the readers.
Sometimes a story also touches me because it describes scenes familiar to me. The life of students and young graduates on and around the campus of Peking University described by Xu Zechen in Ah Beijing! matches my memories. The cohabiting of young people, the complex relations, work as cook and being a rebel poet, all of these seemingly weird constellations create a lively portray of Peking University campus. Therefore even readers who have never been there can feel the atmosphere there.
Zhang Wei is a master of dense atmosphere and magic-realistic description of nature. In his story Sea wind, published in the collection of short stories of the same title, the reader only from sudden appearance of certain characters (thin children with large stomachs etc.) realizes, that the country must be in a famine and that the protagonists of the story, who are experts in getting fish out of the sea and creating delicious fish soup, actually are the salvation for the people living further inland, who finally also come to the shore and are saved.
8 像你提到，一部翻译作品的“异域感”是吸引外国读者阅读的原因之一，除此之外还有别的原因吗？（比如一部小说的历史性背景是否也是原因之一？）
8 As you mentioned, the "exoticism" of a translated work is one of the reasons that attracts foreign readers to read it. Which other reasons are there? (For example, is the historical context of a novel also a reason?)
Curiosity is a common characteristic of readers all around the world. To discover something new or in greater density, for example to dive into a different place and different time, is attractive. Places and times, which bear mystery, are attractive because of their exoticism. Places and times you adore are also attractive. These can be historical turning points or simply a country you like. China still has a long way to win the hearts of people around the world, but it will be successful the freer and the cleaner it becomes. China may revive their ancient virtues like to base things on merits, to consider criticism as constructive, to admit if one was wrong in ones history, to help the poor, the disadvantaged and the minorities, to put ones own language, culture and nation last, and to be humble. But when it will be successful, then there actually may come a new time of "Chinoiserie", where people in the world simply want to read more Chinese literature, because everything which is Chinese is considered "fancy".
8 Wie Sie erwähnten, ist die "Exotik" eines übersetzten Werks einer der Gründe, die ausländische Leser zum Lesen anregen. Welche anderen Gründe gibt es noch? (Ist zum Beispiel der historische Kontext eines Romans auch ein Grund?)
Neugier ist eine gemeinsame Eigenschaft von Lesern auf der ganzen Welt. Etwas Neues oder in größerer Dichte zu entdecken, zum Beispiel in einen anderen Ort und eine andere Zeit einzutauchen, ist attraktiv. Orte und Zeiten, die ein Geheimnis in sich tragen, sind wegen ihrer Exotik attraktiv. Attraktiv sind auch Orte und Zeiten, die Sie verehren. Das können historische Wendepunkte sein oder einfach ein Land, das man mag. China hat noch einen langen Weg vor sich, um die Herzen der Menschen auf der ganzen Welt zu gewinnen, aber es wird erfolgreich sein, je freier und sauberer es wird. China kann seine alten Tugenden wieder aufleben lassen, wie z. B. die Dinge auf Verdiensten aufzubauen, Kritik als konstruktiv zu betrachten, zuzugeben, wenn man sich in seiner Geschichte geirrt hat, den Armen, den Benachteiligten und den Minderheiten zu helfen, die eigene Sprache, Kultur und Nation an die letzte Stelle zu setzen und bescheiden zu sein. Aber wenn das gelingt, dann kann es tatsächlich zu einer neuen Zeit der "Chinoiserie" kommen, in der die Menschen in der Welt einfach mehr chinesische Literatur lesen wollen, weil alles, was chinesisch ist, als "schick" gilt.
本身作品的故事情节以及所营造的脱离现实生活中的世界，就会吸引一部分的读者，比如《哈利波特》这一系列的书籍因为故事中的所营造的霍格沃滋学院是以及作者所塑造的世界都与现实生活完全不一致，但却又十分有趣，因此这异常符合部分读者的阅读兴趣。
另一原因则是出于读者对作者写作风格的喜爱，因而会阅读同一个作者的所有不同作品。
9 在做了这么多年的对比研究后，你认为中西方文学的关注点差异和共通点都有哪些？
9 After so many years of comparative research, what do you think are the differences and commonalities between the concerns of Chinese and Western literature?
The main difference is that Western literature is almost not restricted. Therefore Chinese Writers have a less fortunate starting point. Therefore it is even more remarkable if they produce a few pieces at the level of world literature.
Another main difference is that in Western literature, originality and creativity is appreciated more than rafinesse in expression.
If in Western literature governments or politics are mentioned, they are mostly mentioned in a negative way or criticized. In Chinese literature, the only criticism of governments you find is the one of foreign governments. This makes is sometimes impossible for a Western reader to continue reading, because the constant praise, especially in the category of propaganda literature, scares readers off.
Literature first of all is a way of human communication which bridges time, space and minds. The nation becomes less and less important as a category of literature. Today we have Chinese writers who write in Chinese in America or in English. We have 100 million people worldwide who learn Chinese and who may read the one or other piece of Chinese literature in its original language.
9 Nach so vielen Jahren vergleichender Forschung, was sind Ihrer Meinung nach die Unterschiede und Gemeinsamkeiten zwischen den Anliegen der chinesischen und der westlichen Literatur?
Der Hauptunterschied besteht darin, dass die westliche Literatur fast keine Beschränkungen kennt. Daher haben chinesische Schriftsteller eine weniger glückliche Ausgangsposition. Umso bemerkenswerter ist es, wenn sie ein paar Werke auf dem Niveau der Weltliteratur hervorbringen.
Ein weiterer Hauptunterschied besteht darin, dass in der westlichen Literatur Originalität und Kreativität mehr geschätzt werden als Raffinesse im Ausdruck.
Wenn in der westlichen Literatur Regierungen oder Politik erwähnt werden, dann meist in negativer Weise oder in Form von Kritik. In der chinesischen Literatur findet man nur Kritik an Regierungen, und zwar an ausländischen Regierungen. Das macht es einem westlichen Leser manchmal unmöglich, weiterzulesen, denn das ständige Lob, besonders in der Kategorie der Propagandaliteratur, schreckt die Leser ab.
Literatur ist in erster Linie eine Form der menschlichen Kommunikation, die Zeit, Raum und Köpfe überbrückt. Die Nation wird als Kategorie der Literatur immer unwichtiger. Heute gibt es chinesische Schriftsteller, die in Amerika auf Chinesisch oder auf Englisch schreiben. Wir haben weltweit 100 Millionen Menschen, die Chinesisch lernen und das eine oder andere Werk der chinesischen Literatur in der Originalsprache lesen können.
10 文学是文化交流中很重要的一点，是否可以通过文学翻译打破东西方的认知偏见？
10 Literature is an important point of cultural exchange. Is it possible to break down the perceived bias between East and West through literary translation?
Literature is also an important point of exchange of lives. When you dive deep into a piece of Chinese literature, you even switch lifes with a Chinese protagonist. What is a better way to overcome prejudices than to be a part of another society and culture?
Not everybody has the means and time to travel to understand different cultures. Especially during the pandemic, we can instead watch a documentary or take a book.
In Europe, we have discovered that when there are no borders between countries who have fought each other as enemies in the second world war, that French people are almost totally like Germans etc. If no education tells you that you are different, you start from the common things. From the space, the earth seems one, with no borders. According to statistics, Chinese people are the most intelligent people on earth. From concepts of harmony, datong and the Chinese 56 ethnicities all united in the Chinese citizens, Chinese deeply feel, that Tibetans, Uighurs, people from Hong Kong, Taiwan and even oversea's Chinese in Singapore and the United States all are equal and earn dignity. And in this, they are equal with the ethnicities along the Belt and Road initiative and with all the different ethnicities around the world. Many people in the world expect China to be the new leader of the world. The world's eyes are on China now, how China treats its ethnicities and how it realizes the concepts of "he er bu tong".
I don't think that ordinary people have prejudices from the very beginning. When children grow up, they don't differentiate, classify and stigmatize. You can see that with the gender roles. If you dress a girl as a boy, people will play with her as with a boy, play soccer and give her car toys to play. If you explain to them that it was a girl, they apologize.
10 Literatur ist ein wichtiger Punkt des kulturellen Austauschs. Ist es möglich, die vermeintliche Kluft zwischen Ost und West durch literarische Übersetzungen zu überwinden?
Die Literatur ist auch ein wichtiger Punkt für den Austausch von Leben. Wenn man tief in ein Stück chinesischer Literatur eintaucht, tauscht man sogar das Leben mit einem chinesischen Protagonisten. Gibt es einen besseren Weg, Vorurteile zu überwinden, als Teil einer anderen Gesellschaft und Kultur zu sein?
Nicht jeder hat die Mittel und die Zeit zu reisen, um andere Kulturen zu verstehen. Vor allem während der Pandemie können wir uns stattdessen einen Dokumentarfilm ansehen oder ein Buch zur Hand nehmen.
In Europa haben wir festgestellt, dass es keine Grenzen zwischen Ländern gibt, die sich im Zweiten Weltkrieg als Feinde bekämpft haben, dass die Franzosen fast völlig wie Deutsche sind usw. Wenn einem keine Erziehung sagt, dass man anders ist, geht man von den Gemeinsamkeiten aus. Aus dem Weltraum betrachtet, scheint die Erde eins zu sein, ohne Grenzen. Laut Statistik sind die Chinesen die intelligentesten Menschen auf der Erde. Ausgehend von den Konzepten der Harmonie, des Datong und der 56 chinesischen Ethnien, die alle in den chinesischen Bürgern vereint sind, empfinden die Chinesen zutiefst, dass Tibeter, Uiguren, Menschen aus Hongkong, Taiwan und sogar Übersee-Chinesen in Singapur und den Vereinigten Staaten alle gleich sind und Würde verdienen. Und in dieser Hinsicht sind sie gleichberechtigt mit den Ethnien entlang der Gürtel- und Straßeninitiative und mit all den verschiedenen Ethnien auf der ganzen Welt. Viele Menschen in der Welt erwarten, dass China die neue Führungsrolle in der Welt übernimmt. Die Augen der Welt sind jetzt auf China gerichtet, darauf, wie China seine Ethnien behandelt und wie es die Konzepte von "he er bu tong" umsetzt.
Ich glaube nicht, dass die einfachen Menschen von Anfang an Vorurteile haben. Wenn Kinder aufwachsen, differenzieren, klassifizieren und stigmatisieren sie nicht. Das kann man an den Geschlechterrollen sehen. Wenn man ein Mädchen wie einen Jungen kleidet, werden die Leute mit ihr wie mit einem Jungen spielen, Fußball spielen und ihr Autospielzeug zum Spielen geben. Wenn man ihnen erklärt, dass es ein Mädchen war, entschuldigen sie sich.