(Essential questions) Translator's words|Mao Zhiwen: What kind of influence did the Tang Poems spread in Russia in Russia?
China News Service, Wuhan, December 15th, title: What kind of influence did Tang poetry spread in Russia in Russia?
Author Mao Zhiwen PhD, Shanghai International Studies University, teacher of Wuhan University, member of Chinese Translators Association
Editor's note:
Modern linguistics believes that language can be divided into two parts, namely the sign (form) as the signifier and the meaning (content) as the signifier.
Translation is the conversion of symbols in form, such as phonetics and character (word) form; in content, it includes knowledge and the cultural background and ideological system behind the knowledge.
Practice has shown that translation is by no means simply converting "ABCD" to "A, B, C, D", and exploring the cultural and intellectual exchanges behind the transformation of signs is undoubtedly a key issue that is more academically rational.
"Questions about East and West" recently launched a series of articles on "Translator's Words". The interviewees are both frontline translators and scholars who are concerned about translation. The topics involve translation's form, knowledge, culture, and thought: Why is Du Fu popular in Russia ?
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Walking on the eastern and western cultural beaches rushed out of the "translated language", hoping that readers can follow these questions to find their own eye-catching shells.
"Jiutianchang closed the palace, and the nations of the world worshipped Mianqi."
In the Tang Dynasty, China was prosperous in economy, stable in society, frequent foreign exchanges, free-spirited thinking, and modern poetry gradually developed and perfected, becoming the peak and model of ancient Chinese literature.
As a landmark achievement of Chinese traditional culture, how effective is the translation and dissemination of Tang poetry to foreign countries?
In September 2021, the forest 5D all-media line-immersion phantom light and shadow show "Huakai Shutang Mountain·Light and Shadow Poetry, Calligraphy and Calligraphy" premiered in Shutang Mountain, Changsha. The actors recited Li Bai's "Will Entering Wine".
Photo by China News Agency reporter Yang Huafeng
How does the bright color of Mingzhu spread?
Great poets of the Tang Dynasty emerged in endlessly, and a hundred flowers blossomed.
The beginning of the Tang dynasty was started by Sijie and Chen Ziang; in the prime of the Tang dynasty, two peaks emerged: Li Bai and Du Fu, as well as pastoral poets Meng Haoran and Wang Wei, frontier poets Gao Shi, Cen Shen, etc.; in the middle Tang there were Yuan Bai "Xin Yue Fu" and Han Meng poems Pie; Du Mu and Li Shangyin in the late Tang dynasty add a bright touch to the finishing touch.
These great poets and works are undoubtedly the shining pearls of Chinese traditional culture.
There are roughly two trajectories of its outward transmission: one is eastward transmission, which has a particularly profound and extensive influence on the east neighboring South Korea and Japan.
The other path is to broadcast to the west, which roughly coincides with the land-based Silk Road in the “Belt and Road” initiative. Countries such as Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia are all important nodes.
The translation and dissemination of Tang poetry in Russia has roughly gone through four periods: the budding period (the end of the 19th century), the development period (the first half of the 20th century), the climax period (50-60s), and the new period (1990s) to date).
What was the first Tang poem translated in Russian?
At the end of the 19th century, the Russian academic and cultural circles began to pay attention to Tang poetry.
In 1874, Wang Bo's Preface to the Pavilion of the King of Teng, published by the Printing House of the Ministry of Transport of St. Petersburg, was the first Russian translation of a poem in Tang Dynasty. It has 10 pages and the translator is anonymous.
Since then, individual works by poets such as Li Bai and Du Fu have been translated and introduced, but most of them have been translated from other languages. The translation is relatively large and fragmented.
It is worth mentioning that at that time, famous Russian poets such as Balmont, Gumilev, Akhmatova, etc. had actively participated in the Russian translation of Tang poetry, and their writing style was greatly influenced by Tang poetry.
In August 2014, the 48-meter-long "Preface to Tengwang Pavilion" cursive calligraphy hand scroll appeared in the famous Tengwang Pavilion scenic spot in the south of the Yangtze River.
Photo by China News Agency reporter Liu Zhankun
The 1920s and 1930s was a period of rapid development in the Russian translation of Tang poetry.
In 1920, academician Alekseyev, a famous Soviet sinologist, proposed a grand plan for the translation of Chinese literary masterpieces, and began to systematically translate works by Li Bai, Du Fu, Wang Wei, Bai Juyi and others, which can be regarded as a landmark event.
Later, his student Huutsky inherited the mantle and translated and introduced it in the form of a collection of Tang poems.
Both teachers and students are proficient in Chinese, and translated from Chinese word by word sentence by sentence. The semantic content of the poem is very accurate, and the rhyme and rhythm of the original poem are well preserved.
These laid the foundation for the later large-scale translation of Tang poetry.
Why was Du Fu so popular in the Soviet Union?
The Russian translation of Tang poems entered a prosperous period in the 1950s and 1960s.
This is not only due to the continuous accumulation of previous generations of sinologists and the improvement of translation skills; it is also related to the background that China and the Soviet Union were in the "honeymoon period" at that time.
Under the strong Sinology atmosphere, Soviet Sinologists have completed the systematic translation and introduction of most of the works of famous poets in the Tang Dynasty, and the study of Tang poetry is also in full swing.
At this time, there was also a grand occasion of translation jointly by Chinese and Russian poets.
For example, in 1957, Guo Moruo and Federin jointly translated "Chinese Tang Dynasty Poetry Collection".
The collection was published by the Moscow State Literature Publishing House, and it was widely circulated in the Soviet Union, with nearly 40,000 copies in its first release.
Due to the high quality of the translation, the translation was republished again and again, and the supply was in short supply.
During this period, as one of the series of "World Celebrity Biography" founded by Gorky, the "Biography of Du Fu" published by the famous Soviet sinologist Bie Ren was originally planned to publish 15,000 copies. It was unexpectedly sold out and had to be added. print.
Du Fu's realistic poems were very popular in the Soviet Union, because the thoughts in his poems of worrying about the country and the people and sympathizing with the suffering of the people easily resonated with the vicissitudes of the local people.
In August 2021, the drama "Du Fu" kicked off a new round of performances in Beijing, and the image of Du Fu in the play was clearly on paper.
Photo by China News Agency reporter Shi Chunyang
"Translating Poems by Poetry": Adjacent to Rhymes, Embracing Rhymes and Interlaced Rhymes
From the 1990s to the present, Tang poetry has given new vitality in Russia.
After the normalization of Sino-Soviet relations, the Russian translation of Tang poetry in the new era showed two major characteristics: one is the continuous innovation of Tang poetry translation methods, and the other is that contemporary sinologists have carried out innovative research on Tang poetry from different perspectives.
For example, the famous Sinologist Menlev inherited the tradition of "translating poems with poems" by Alekseyev and Gidovich, paying special attention to reproducing the rhymes of poems, and tried to use Russian adjacent rhymes, enclosing rhymes and interlaced rhymes in the translation. Reproduce the rhyme of Tang poetry.
He also used the complete and incomplete steps of Russian to restore the "flat zhe", trying to reproduce the unique double tones, repetition, antithesis, and transposition in Chinese poetry.
These are all innovative breakthroughs from the predecessors.
It can be said that Menshikov's translation of Tang poetry is not only faithful and elegant, but also has both form and spirit.
Notable Tang poetry scholars include Azarova from the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
She is deeply influenced by the cultural schools of Western translation theory, and believes that the purpose of translation is cultural transformation, and she is bolder and innovative in the translation methods of Tang poetry.
She creatively carried out translation experiments and organized 9 contemporary Russian sinologists including Aristof, Galina, and Yelmakova to translate Du Fu's "Spring Hope" and "Wang Yue" simultaneously.
One text and nine translations, unprecedented.
She also tried to reduce the total number of vocabulary in the translation process, increase the semantic capacity of words, and emphasize the visual effect of poetry text. She believes that the length and position of poem lines, word count, punctuation, and accent will affect the appearance and rhythm of the text.
Du Fu's calligraphy of "Wang Yue".
Photo by Zhong Xin issued by China News Service
Azarova also believes that the Russian translation of Tang poetry can show the potential of Russian expressing hieroglyphic thinking. If Russian readers want to develop this kind of hieroglyphic thinking, they cannot regard the hieroglyphic system of Chinese poetry as the object of conquest and manipulation, but should Understand it as a language system for equal cultural exchanges.
In the translation process, Azarova fully respects Chinese language and words, and realizes that the translation of Chinese poetry has a profound impact on modern Russian and the thinking of Russian readers.
Due to space limitations, I can only introduce these two most representative translators, and you can see the whole world at a glance. The influence of traditional Chinese culture in the world has been expanding, and the translation and research of Tang poetry has gradually become prominent in Russia.
Why did Li Bai's poems promote the study of "Tao De Jing" in Russia?
The study of Tang poetry has a positive interaction with the study of Russian literature and sinology.
For example, the social critical perspective commonly used by Soviet traditional literary schools has also been applied to the study of Du Fu's poetry.
Sinologist Sheri Bryyakov has thoroughly studied the reality and people's character of Du Fu's poetry, and believes that Du Fu is the founder of the social school of poetry in the Tang Dynasty.
These research results in turn promoted the development of Soviet realist literature and translation studies.
For another example, modern and contemporary Russian sinologists pay much attention to the study of religious thought in Tang poetry.
Sinologist Dagdanov thoroughly studied the Zen-Buddha thought in the poems of Wang Wei, Meng Haoran, and Bai Juyi, which was popular in Russian Sinology for a while.
Under this influence, the works of many Zen and Buddhism poets have received more translations in Russia, such as Hanshan poems and Wang Fanzhi poems.
In particular, Menshikov's translation of Wang Fanzhi's poems brought new life to the Dunhuang manuscripts sleeping in St. Petersburg after a catastrophe, and promoted the study and development of Dunhuang Studies in Russia.
Similarly, the study of Taoist elements in Li Bai's poems by Russian Tang poets also aroused the interest of Russian Sinology in the study of Chinese Taoism, and promoted the translation and research of Tao Te Ching in Russia.
The collision between Russian Sinology and Chinese Tang poetry created a spark of wisdom.
In August 2014, in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, a visitor was admiring the entire volume of the world's largest calligraphy work "The Tao Te Ching".
China News Agency issued An Dong photo
The influence of Tang poetry is breaking through the Confucian cultural circle
From Russian academic circles to ordinary people, they are all positively influenced by Tang poetry.
The study of Tang poetry by Russian sinologists often breaks new ground and is refreshing.
For example, in the 1970s, the famous Russian Sinologist Conrad proposed from the perspective of comparing Chinese and Western cultures that the Tang Dynasty appeared "Chinese Renaissance", and the degree of attention to human personality increased in the Tang Dynasty.
"Because people live in a world full of human nature, literature, art, and philosophy should all serve people themselves. This is consistent with the'humanism' trend of thought advocated during the Western Renaissance." The Tang Dynasty was developed. The printing industry and a large number of books accelerated the spread of humanism. Therefore, a large number of realist poets represented by Du Fu, Bai Juyi, Du Mu, etc. in the Tang Dynasty paid more attention to the future and destiny of the laboring people and the motherland.
As an orientalist, Conrad rejected the Western-centrism point of view and treated poets and their poems in the Tang Dynasty from an equal perspective. This deeply influenced the study of contemporary Russian Sinology. The contemporary translator Azarova mentioned earlier It is an example.
At the level of ordinary people in Russia, taking Du Fu's poems as an example, the patriotism, love for peace, care for ordinary people's suffering, attention to human relations and benevolence expressed in the poems have been welcomed and passed down across time and space barriers and ethnic limitations.
The widespread dissemination and acceptance of Tang poetry among Russian researchers and ordinary people shows that traditional Chinese thought and culture have great appeal to contemporary Russians.
The charm of Chinese traditional culture exuded in Tang poems is jumping out of the East Asian Confucian cultural circle, and is going to the world along the silk road of the west.
(Finish)
About the Author:
Born in 1983, Mao Zhiwen, a young poet, scholar, and translator, has a PhD in Shanghai International Studies University, a postdoctoral fellow in Foreign Languages and Literatures of Wuhan University, and a member of the Chinese Translators Association. He currently teaches in the Russian Department of the School of Foreign Languages and Literatures of Wuhan University.
He was a visiting scholar in the Department of Languages and Literature of St. Petersburg State University, Russia (2016-2017) with a Chinese-Russian government scholarship. His research interests include poetics, translation, and Russian translation of Tang poetry.
He once presided over the general project of the National Social Science Fund "Research on the Translation, Dissemination and Influence of Tang Poetry in Russia", the Hubei Provincial Social Science Foundation Youth Project "Structural Poetics and Poetry Translation", 3 projects and 14 projects of the Humanities and Social Sciences Fund of Wuhan University 1 planned project.
Published the monograph "Research on Russian-Chinese Poetry Translation from the Perspective of Structural Poetics" (China Social Science Press, 2016), compiled 2 textbooks, compiled 1 dictionary, and published in "Chinese Translation", "Shanghai Translation", and "Foreign Language Teaching" More than ten papers related to poetry translation have been published in CSSCI core journals such as "Theory and Practice" and "Russian Teaching in China".