Text |Li Zhao.
In the garden of literature, translators are like invisible beings, they are willing to be plain, work silently, and introduce the achievements of another civilization to China with unimaginable enthusiasm of ordinary people. In the era of eagerly eager to open the window to see the world, Yan Fu, Fu Lei, Zhu Shenghao, He Zhaowu, Cao Ying and others were praised along with their translations, and as the way of touching the world and translating foreign classics into Chinese increased, the translators we remember and respect literary translators are less and less. Recently, the famous translators Li Wenjun (93 years old) and Mr. Yang Yi (103 years old) have passed away one after another, which makes us focus on low-key literary translators, and also evoke the respect for literary translators that we are gradually forgetting.
Lu Xun once called those who study and translate foreign cultures "fire thieves", implying that Prometheus stole the "heavenly fire" for China. In the early days of reform and opening up, Chinese literature, which had been dormant for a long time, ushered in the opportunity of the renewal of Vientiane, and experienced an unprecedented period, during which the two translators Li Wenjun and Mr. Yang Yi were playing such a role. In 1979, Li Wenjun, then editor of World Literature, translated Kafka's Metamorphosis into China, which used symbolism and detailed descriptions to artistically reconstruct the "Man into Beetle Incident", which brought a strong shock to the hungry Chinese literary world and became a landmark event in the large-scale translation of modern Western literature. As a peer of the May Fourth Movement, Mr. Yang Li pioneered the translation of "Wuthering Heights", and her representative translation was highly sought after after returning to people's vision in 1980, and the book was repeatedly reprinted for many years, opening the door to world literature for countless Chinese. In this prosperous era created by the majority of writers and translators, a large number of Western literary works translated and introduced by Mr. Li Wenjun and Mr. Yang Yi brought a strong collision and impact to the Chinese literary circle, triggering the reflection of a generation of writers such as Mo Yan, Yu Hua, and Su Tong on Chinese literature, and thus awakening and activating their life insights and creative inspiration in the depths of their memories, and then opening a new literary journey for Chinese writers.
Mao Dun once said, "The translation of literature is to convey the artistic conception of the original work in another language, so that readers can get the same inspiration, moving and beautiful feelings when reading the translated text as if they were reading the original work." However, in order to transform the literary classics born in the soil of different cultures into another language, it is not only necessary for the translator to have a sharp vision for choosing the author, a very high level of foreign language proficiency and literary literacy, but also for the translator to have the character of hard work, loneliness, and poverty, so that it is possible to create a translation that is equivalent to the ideological level and artistic skills of the original work. Nobel Prize-winning writer Faulkner's works are notoriously difficult, and Li Wenjun was the first translator to introduce Faulkner to Chinese readers. In the most difficult works such as "When I Am Dying" and "Go, Moses", he could only translate hundreds of words a day, and he became seriously ill due to overwork, and received five critical illness notices alone, and finally gnawed this "hard bone" with admirable courage and perseverance, and translated millions of words related to Faulkner. And Mr. Yang Yi, shining with the same translator's light, "Wuthering Heights" is her first translation work, before this "Wutheringheights" was translated by Liang Shiqiu as "Roaring Heights", she pondered for a long time and felt that it lacked a little taste, and finally changed its name to "Wuthering Heights", her translation is still one of the most classic translations of this masterpiece. After entering the old age, she completed the translation of books such as "Song of Innocence and Experience" and "I Come Naked: The Biography of Rodin", which are full of vitality and power. Translators such as Li Wenjun and Mr. Yang Yi have taken generations of readers to enjoy the distant scenery and watched the wheat fields with generations of readers, making our reading and spiritual life more full and rich.
It is a blessing for any writer to have such translators in a foreign land, and it is even more fortunate for any reader to encounter the painstaking translations of excellent translators, who make us understand the author's "voice" with their exquisite translations, and we can get endless inspiration from their life experiences. Don't be sad, they will always "live" in the temple of literature, reading is the best nostalgia for them, they will never go away.