He brought "A Dream of Red Mansions" into the Spanish-speaking world
【News figures】
September 1995, the registration season for Peking University freshmen.
During this time, a teacher who is over fifty years old in a short-sleeved crew-neck shirt can be seen riding a flatbed tricycle back and forth across the beautiful campus where the heat has not yet subsided, helping the freshmen of the Spanish Department with luggage.
Some freshmen saw him and greeted him: "Hey, master, help us pull a car too!"
The master who rode a tricycle back then was the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award for Translation Culture issued by the China Translators Association today, and then Professor Zhao Zhenjiang, director of the Department of Western Languages and Literature at Peking University.
He is a well-known senior Spanish translator in my country. He has won the Knights Medal for many times in Spanish, Peru, Chile, Argentina and other Spanish-speaking countries, and enjoys a high reputation in my country's poetry and Spanish literature circles.
"These two images seem to be completely different, but in my mind, they are one. This is our teacher Zhao, who has won many international and domestic honorary awards under the spotlight, and is in the entire poetry translation industry. He enjoys a very high reputation; at the same time, in life, he is so approachable and a lovely teacher.” said Associate Professor Fan Ye, the current dean of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Peking University.
"These are the little things"
Here I sing aloud,
Accompanied by the melodious sound of the piano.
Can't sleep alone at night,
Because of great sadness.
Like a stray bird,
By singing to comfort the desolate.
(The beginning of the Argentine epic "Martin Fierro", author Jose Hernandez, poet, journalist, statesman, 1834-1886; translated by Zhao Zhenjiang)
Zhao Zhenjiang, born in 1940, is a native of Ximagezhuang Village, Gaoliying Town, Shunyi District, Beijing. The current northern line of the Capital Airport runs through the south of the village.
His hometown was liberated in 1948, when he was 8 years old.
At that time, there was no primary school in the village, and there was no middle school in the entire Shunyi County.
"If there is no Communist Party and no new China, I can only be like all the children of the peasant family back then, 'face the loess with the back to the sky', or be an apprentice from a young age like my father, there is no other way out." Zhao Zhenjiang said sincerely.
He joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1958 when he was a high school student at Niulanshan Middle School, when he was 18 years old.
In 1959, he was admitted to the Department of Spanish Language at Peking University, majoring in French.
In 1960, due to the success of the Cuban Revolution, the Spanish Language Department decided to select three students from the French class to study Spanish in the future. Among them was Zhao Zhenjiang, who became the first Spanish student in Peking University after learning French for a year and a half. language students.
From 1979 to 1981, Zhao Zhenjiang was selected by the Ministry of Education to study Spanish language and literature in Mexico, and was designated as the director of the academic committee and secretary of the party branch, responsible for the daily life and party group activities of more than 20 international students and advanced students.
He cherished this opportunity to study abroad very much. After completing his studies and work as an international student, he translated the full text of the Argentine epic "Martin Fierro".
At that time, he translated this work entirely out of hobby, never thought of publishing it, and put it on the shelf after the translation.
In 1984, an unexpected opportunity came.
To commemorate the 150th anniversary of the birth of José Hernandez, the author of the epic, the Argentine Ministry of Culture will hold a grand commemoration and set the poet's birthday as a traditional cultural festival. ".
When our country got the news, there were only 4 months left. With the strong support of relevant central departments, Zhao Zhenjiang's Chinese translation "Martin Fierro" was delivered to Buenos Aires as scheduled. was warmly welcomed.
The Argentine "Martin Fierro" Translators Association entrusted Mr. Zhang Zhiya, Cultural Counselor of the Chinese Embassy in Argentina, to bring a translator's certificate and commemorative silver coins to Zhao Zhenjiang.
Through "Martin Fierro", Mr. Zhang Zhiya met Zhao Zhenjiang.
In 1987, when Zhang Zhiya was a cultural counselor in Spain, he recommended him to go to the University of Granada to proofread the Spanish version of A Dream of Red Mansions.
When Zhao Zhenjiang got there, he realized that the original translation was unusable and had to be revised word by word, which was similar to a retranslation.
But it was impossible to back off, so I had to bite the bullet and go on.
He asked the University of Granada to send a person with strong literary skills to participate in the translation school, otherwise good things will be difficult to achieve.
And just like that, he first teamed up with Garcia Sanchez and later Alicia Relink joined them.
After 18 years, finally in 2005, the three-volume Spanish version of "Dream of Red Mansions" was published.
Zhao Zhenjiang is the first author of this translation, but neither copyright nor remuneration.
At that time, because there was no salary budget for Zhao Zhenjiang in the preparation sequence of the University of Granada, the school could only provide him with room and board and a small amount of subsidies.
At the suggestion of some Spanish friends, the principal tried every means to provide help within his capacity, such as arranging him to give lectures for the university summer school, and giving him a set of eight volumes of "History of Spanish Literary Criticism" at Christmas.
Looking back on the past, Zhao Zhenjiang said flatly: "These are all trivial matters, it doesn't matter. But translating "Dream of Red Mansions", not everyone has the opportunity, and they are fortunate enough to do such a thing in a lifetime, and do something to promote Chinese civilization and promote cultural exchanges between China and foreign countries. The truth is, it’s worth the effort.”
"Translate Poems Like Poems"
Green, I like you green.
green wind.
green branches.
The ship sails on the sea,
Horses gallop in the mountains.
(The beginning of "The Ballad of Sleepwalking", Federico García Lorca, a famous Spanish poet and playwright, 1898-1936; translated by Zhao Zhenjiang)
Lorca, the name is not unfamiliar to many Chinese readers. Since Mr. Dai Wangshu translated his works in the 1930s, new translations are still coming out today.
"In this world," Lorca said, "I have always been and will always be on the side of the poor, always on the side of those who have nothing, and on the side of those who have not even the peace of nothingness."
Like Lorca, the great poets who were and are still active in the world of poetry, are their poems translatable or not?
This issue has been discussed in our country for many years and is still being explored.
In this regard, Zhao Zhenjiang believes: "It seems that there is no practical significance to discuss this issue, because domestic poets and readers need to read foreign poems, so everyone is translating."
There has always been a consensus in the translation industry: "Translating poetry with poetry should also be poetry, and translated poetry should be like poetry."
This sentence seems simple, but it is very difficult to do well.
Zhao Zhenjiang has a profound experience: "Poetry translation itself is a second creation, and it cannot be separated from the original poem. If it is separated from the original poem, it is a random translation. However, it cannot be translated word by word. Poetry. What we seek is nothing more than the best approximation of the translated poem to the original. But this can only be achieved through trial and error, and the process is endless."
When giving lectures, Zhao Zhenjiang often used the poems in "A Dream of Red Mansions" as an example to explain that the translation of poems can only be created twice.
For example, "The sky is full of flowers and flowers, and the red and fragrance are broken. Who cares?" "The autumn flowers are bleak and the autumn grass is yellow, and the autumn lights are long in the autumn night." People inside the curtain, people are not far from peach blossoms" and so on.
He said that in foreign languages, repetition is the most taboo; but in Chinese, it is a rhetorical device.
Therefore, it is impossible to carry out a "seat-on-the-seat" translation.
Another example is the first few lines of "Sleepwalking People's Ballad", which Dai Wangshu translated: "Green, how much I love you green. / Green wind, green branches. / The boat is on the sea, / The horse is in the mountains."
What Zhao Zhenjiang translated was: "Green, I like you green. / Green wind. Green branches. / Boats sailing on the sea / Horses galloping in the mountains."
Some people say that adding "driving" and "Benz" in the last two sentences is superfluous.
However, Zhao Zhenjiang said: "Mr. Dai translated it very well, but I think there can be different translations of the classics, and readers can refer to and compare them. I added these four words for two reasons."
He explained that, first, the original poem is the rhythm of traditional ballads, with eight syllables per line, while "the boat is on the sea, / the horse is in the mountains", but each line has only four characters, that is, four syllables, which seems a little bit awkward. "Short"; secondly, he has seen a short film interpreting "Sleepwalking People's Ballad". The picture shows a boat sailing on the sea and a white horse rushing left and right in the mountains. The poet used these two images to express It is the desire and impulse of the human heart.
He feels that this way of handling the translation may better reflect the poet's original intention.
"The first thing to pay attention to is both virtue and art"
"When the first fascist bullets pierced the Spanish concertina, instead of notes, blood flowed."
(Pablo Neruda, 1904-1973, a famous contemporary poet in Chile; translated by Zhao Zhenjiang)
The famous contemporary Chilean poet Neruda and Mexican poet Paz are both world-renowned Spanish-language poets.
"Their works are full of passion, broad vision, permeated with wisdom of perception, and embody lofty humanistic feelings. The most valuable thing about them is that they write poems from the height of human beings and humanity, not for individuals." Zhao Zhenjiang commented, "Neruda focused on reflecting the social, or class, nature of human beings; Paz paid more attention to the natural attributes of human beings, that is, human nature. They considered issues from the perspective of human beings."
When Zhao Zhenjiang exchanges ideas with poets, he always expresses his inner feelings candidly: "From my experience in translating foreign poetry, all world-class poets must have a broad vision and a lofty realm. I seldom write about those fragmented and private small grievances and small sentiments. Of course, these small genre poems are also indispensable, but only writing such works, I think it is difficult to become a master. "
Neruda is Chilean, but his concern is not just Chile, not just Spanish-speaking countries, but all mankind.
He wrote a poem entitled "China".
In his famous long poem "The Woodcutter Awakens", there is also a verse about China: "...You (referring to the US military) must never land in China: Foreign slave comprador Chiang Kai-shek / There will be no more corrupt bureaucratic groups around you: /Awaiting you will be jungles of peasants' scythes/And volcanoes of dynamite."
So did Cesar Ballojo, another Spanish-language poet.
He is Peruvian, but he cares about all mankind. He has been running a poetry publication in Paris for a long time, visited the Soviet Union many times, joined the Communist Party in Spain and participated in the anti-fascist war, and wrote the famous poem "Spain, please take away this cup of bitterness" liquor".
Zhao Zhenjiang spent more than ten years, carefully translated Ballojo's works, and believes that his mind and vision are very worthy of learning and reference.
During his decades of Spanish poetry translation, "A Dream of Red Mansions" in Spanish and "Martin Fierro" in Chinese can be said to be Zhao Zhenjiang's most important translations.
In addition, he is the main translator of Spanish poetry in the country, and he has translated all the works of Nobel Prize-winning poets in Spain and Spanish America.
Zhao Zhenjiang chooses poems not only for the quality of the poems, but also for the character.
The first collection of Spanish lyric poems he translated was Tenderness, an anthology of the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral, known as the "queen of lyricism".
She was the first Latin American poet to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.
"It was controversial that she won the Nobel Prize. Because, purely from the perspective of poetry and art, she is not necessarily the best poet." Zhao Zhenjiang said.
But he thinks: "The passion of love running between the lines makes her works shine brightly in the splendid Latin American poetry world. The theme written in her poetry can be summed up in one word, that is love, from love to Maternal love, from maternal love to fraternity." What Zhao Zhenjiang respects more is the poet's character and her spiritual world.
Mistral lived a hard life since childhood, never went to school, was self-taught, never married, dedicated his life to literature, and donated the copyright of his works to poor children in his hometown and orphans who lost their parents in the Spanish Civil War.
Later, she became a staff member of the United Nations Foundation and worked tirelessly to protect the rights and interests of women and children throughout her life.
Zhao Zhenjiang concluded: "I choose the target of translation, the first thing I pay attention to is the combination of virtue and art."
Zhao Zhenjiang is not only a senior translator and professor, but also a senior with simplicity and humility.
When exchanging translation experience with young people, he often has a humble and equal attitude, which is quite the demeanor of the elderly.
As the poet Jidi Maga commented: "He is not only a translator, but also a person who turns his words into actions and reality."
(Reporter Ji Yanan from this newspaper, Beijing, April 1)