What is the task of a translator?, "Going Global" in Contemporary Chinese Literature
Currently, many excellent foreign literary works are constantly being displayed on our bookshelves, and contemporary Chinese literature has also entered foreign bookstores and libraries through the efforts of a group of overseas translators. For example, Liu Cixin's "Three Body Problem" has sparked a reading frenzy overseas.
What is the task of a translator on the path of "going out and bringing in" literary works? Recently, in the October Literature Month series of activities, writer Wen Zhen brought up such a topic to everyone.
Dutch translator Shi Lu said that when translating a Chinese work into Dutch, she first hopes that Dutch readers, her own relatives and friends can also understand it, which makes her feel meaningful.
In specific translation practice, she believes that the most difficult thing to translate is the unique elements in different cultures. For translators, it is a creative task to create a concept that is easy for foreign readers to understand. "Therefore, I will keep in touch with the contemporary Chinese writers I translate and sometimes ask questions to the translated writers in order to better translate and understand the work."
"Actually, without a writer, there would be no translation, there would be no translator," said Ukrainian translator Kajia. She believes that translation has a wonderful relationship with writers, and the translator is equivalent to creating another work during the translation process. Meanwhile, translation work can make the people of a country aware of their own culture and values.
Kajia stated that she has recently paid special attention to the works of Chinese female authors, such as Yang Jiang's "The Three of Us", Zhang Li's selection of Chinese female literature works "Twilight and Dancing Bear", and young writer Zhang Tianyi's novel "Spring Salt".
In the eyes of writer Cao Wenxuan, translators are great liberators of thought and knowledge. Through translation work, a large number of classics from different countries have become a common possession of the world. Although different civilizations have mutually difficult to understand contexts, there is a basic literary standard that everyone agrees upon.
"We need to open the door and welcome foreign friends in, so that we can be better understood by different civilizations and Chinese literature can become a part of world literature," Cao Wenxuan proposed.
Writer Xu Zechen agrees with Cao Wenxuan's viewpoint, believing that the translator has to some extent recreated a world. "For example, although Chinese late Qing translator Lin Shu did not understand foreign languages and adopted a reintegrated translation method, novelists such as Lu Xun and Yu Dafu actually benefited from Lin Shu's translation. In this sense, the translator is a creator. The translation process may lose some parts, but at the same time, it will also add some things. Therefore, in this sense, the added part is actually a creative improvement made by the translator based on their own mother tongue."
"I believe that translators actually play the role of knights. The thoughts and achievements of writers are like princesses trapped in their mother tongue, waiting in a castle for translators to break free from the constraints of their mother tongue like knights and rescue literature and civilization," said writer Wen Zhen.
