[Sight] A person walks his own way and reaps "beauty and happiness"

　　On the morning of June 17, Mr. Xu Yuanchong, a leading Chinese translation industry and a professor at the School of Journalism and Communication of Peking University, passed away in Beijing at the age of 100.

　　Two months ago, he just passed his 100th birthday-born in 1921, a warlord in troubled times, he studied at Southwest Associated University amidst artillery fire, stayed in France, returned to China, taught, insisted on translation, and fully witnessed a century of experience. The waves are magnificent and prosperous years.

　　Four days before his birthday, the Commercial Press held the launch ceremony of the first series of "The Complete Works of Xu Yuanchong's Chinese Translation of Classics". Mr. Xu Yuanchong attended the event.

"He is in good spirits, and we also agreed to give him many birthdays together..."

　　The theme of the first release is "100-year-old beauty and happiness", which is like a kind of footnote of Mr.'s life.

　　Xu Yuanchong believes that translation is a kind of art, and it must pay attention to "the beauty of sound, shape, and meaning" and go beyond the original text.

He often said that "translation is the transformation of the beauty created by a country into the beauty of the world". This is his pursuit and persistence of "beauty".

　　Also because of "beauty", he "quarreled" with others and never compromised.

The most well-known controversy is related to "Red and Black".

The last sentence of the book, "Elle mourut", is translated by Xu Yuanchong as "Soul Guili Hengtian".

A colleague said that his translation was "a colorful thing".

Xu Yuanchong refused to accept, even if he fought alone, he would not give up.

Quite happy wind.

　　Controversy is a thing of the past, but "Soul Guili Hengtian" has become a classic.

　　In 2014, Xu Yuanchong won the "Northern Light" Outstanding Literary Translation Award, which is one of the highest awards in the international translation industry.

"The book has sold more than a hundred copies both at home and abroad, and the only person translating poems into English and French" is his business card.

It sounds "crazy", but it is a fact. If it is "conceited", it is also qualified enough-he has published more than 120 translations of Chinese, English and French works at home and abroad.

　　For the sudden death of a centenarian, people who have been in contact with him or followers still inevitably express surprise and sadness.

　　The famous publisher Wang Jiaming said that Mr. Xu Yuanchong's appearance is still vivid in front of his eyes, "I saw Mr. Xu in April, his voice was very loud, and his voice was louder than everyone present when he spoke."

　　For filming the documentary "Southwest Associated University" and the movie "Post-Nine Zeros", director Xu Bei visited Xu Yuanchong twice in 2017 and 2019.

"In my heart, he is a person who can live forever. It turns out that he will also leave." Xu Bei was very sad, "Another candle went out, and my heart was empty."

　　In November 2019, when Xu Bei and his colleagues interviewed Xu Yuanchong, they told him that his classmate Wu Ningkun (famous translator and translator of The Great Gatsby) at Southwest United University had passed away not long ago.

At the news, the old man was surprised for a moment: "Did he pass away? I don't know."

　　Xu Bei recalled: "The attitude of the old man will make you feel that he has received a particularly normal thing,'our class (people) are slowly gone'. He feels like this about life and death."

　　Looking back at Mr. Xu Yuanchong's life, Southwest Associated University should be the starting point.

In 1938, the year he was admitted to the Southwest Associated University was the second year of the full outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War.

His favorite writer at the time was Lu Xun, who read his translations of foreign works, so he fell in love with translations.

　　When I was studying at Southwest Associated University, there were two roads in front of the university, one was a highway, and the other was a shortcut with many people.

Xu Yuanchong "does not like to walk the way everyone walks, but only likes to walk his own way alone."

In the diary, he wrote: "I used to like to walk my own way by myself, but now I also like to walk my way by myself, and in the future I will have to walk my own way by myself."

　　He chose to translate, this is the choice he made in the face of the times.

From then on, my resume is a simple straight line: after I graduated from Southwestern United University, I worked as an English teacher for a period of time. Later, I was admitted to the Tsinghua Research Institute, studied translation, studied in France, translated Dryden, returned to China after graduation, and taught until retirement. Translation is endless.

　　After many years, Xu Yuanchong is still "walking his own way alone."

　　In recent years, he has been writing his autobiography "A Hundred Years Dream" one after another, and it's time to write about it in high school.

It's a pity that "A Hundred Years Dream" has no chance to finish writing.

　　He used to work in the middle of the night until three or four in the morning, sometimes until four or five.

Then at 7 or 8 in the morning, I sat behind the nanny's electric car and went for a walk in the nearby park.

　　The night before my death, I hadn't slept again.

At five o'clock in the morning, he wanted to go for a walk.

The nanny persuaded him to rest before going out, he obeyed and went to sleep.

　　In his sleep, Mr. Xu Yuanchong never woke up.

　　At the beginning of this day, in the Changchun Garden of Peking University in the middle of the night, that light will no longer be on.

　　Chen Junyu

Chen Junyu