Literary Translation and Bad Translation: Taking Haruki Murakami's Translation as an Example

In today’s era, even readers who don’t care much about translation basically know that many bad translations that are shoddy are bad because the translator always tries to show himself to the readers by surpassing the original work and the original author. writing is better.

However, it is difficult for ordinary readers to see clearly or explain clearly that such bad translators actually have shallow knowledge and poor skills. Such translators often know or never know that their knowledge and skills are not good, and they obviously do not have that ability. , but pretends to be capable or thinks he is capable.

Unfortunately, there are enough of these bad translations, and therefore often enough, to be confusing.

Over the years, I have always wanted to come up with a demonstration that I am not afraid of ignorance, but I am afraid of comparing goods. A simple enough example can clearly show to readers who do not know a foreign language or have a low level of foreign language how despicable a shoddy translation is. , how ridiculous, how deceitful, how ruined the original. But such an example is not so easy to find, because such an example must meet at least three conditions:

1. It should be long enough to show the systematic habit of the problem rather than accidental, but not too long;
2. It should be interesting enough and simple enough not to pose an excessive test to the reader's patience;
3. It needs to be famous enough to make enough readers curious to see what happened.

Now, I finally found such an example to share with you.

The example I want to give is the original Japanese text of a passage in Haruki Murakami's "Norwegian Wood" and two Chinese translations, one of which is a translation as close as possible to the original text, and the other is Lin Shaohua's translation.

The reason why I chose Haruki Murakami and a passage from "Norwegian Wood" as an example is because Haruki Murakami and his "Norwegian Wood" are famous enough, and that passage is widely read by readers because of its obvious literary quality Notice. Readers who understand Japanese or read a translation as close as possible to the original text will clearly see or feel the literariness of that passage, and can clearly see and feel how bad the shoddy translation is. not good.

What needs to be declared is that although this kind of translation evaluation is a discussion of translation, it is actually a matter of careful reading of the text. For literary reading and literary writing, this kind of kung fu is very important and extremely important basic skills-good readers and good writers must be people who pay attention to the details of the text, and try to figure out the original text and good words by comparing bad translations. The magic of translation, you can get the effective learning of "not afraid of not knowing the goods, but afraid of comparing goods".

All in all, literary reading and writing must pay attention to the details of words, otherwise it must be fooling things, nonsense, nothing else.

In China, most of Haruki Murakami's works are translated by Lin Shaohua, so it is of great significance to use Lin Shaohua's translation as a prop for demonstration and explanation. I believe that the examples I have given here amply and uncontroversially show how bad the most common bad translations are. By the way, Lin’s translation is just a typical example of embedding new ideas, shoddy and shoddy translations. In today's China, such translation is a major genre and a cultural landscape.

My specific display method is to first list the original Japanese text of "Norwegian Forest" (ノルウェイの森), then list the translation as close as possible to the original text, and then briefly explain the features of the original text and the translation. Then, list Lin Shaohua's translations and point out the problems of Lin Shaohua's translations in the simplest way.

My presentation should be easy to understand and entertaining, even people who don't understand Japanese or translation should find it interesting enough.

Friends who don’t understand Japanese can skip the original Japanese text, and just use the translation I provided as close to the original text as the judgment benchmark. You don’t need to worry too much about any major problems with the translation I provided. I believe that there are many readers who understand Japanese. If the translation I provided is not close to the original text, or if there is a loss or distortion of the original meaning, some readers will point it out.

Haruki Murakami "Norwegian Forest" (ノルウェイの森) excerpt from the original text :

 Eighteen years という歳月がぎぎ去ってしまった今でも, servant はあの Grasslandの景をはっきりと思い出すことができる. He Ri か tsu づ い た や わ ら か な に summer あ あ い だ の ほ こ り を す っ か り wash い flow さ れ た mountain muscle は deep く fresh や か な Qing Mi を た た え, october no wind は す き の 糕 wo あ ち こ で 揺らせ, slender い cloud が が り つ く よ う na Qing い zenith ni ぴたりとはりついてた. Kongwa Gaoku, じっと见ていると目が痛くなるほどだった. Wind は Grassland を わ た り, He Nu の Hair を か す か に 揺らせ て 雑木林 に 抜 け て い っ た. Tip の 叶 が さ ら さ ら と sound を 立 て, far く の square de dog の sound く sound が 闻 こ え た.まるで别の世界の口口から闻こえてるような小さくかすんだ铃き声だった。その他にはどんな物音もなかった。どんな物音も我々の儿には身かなかった。 Who alone ともすれ violates わなかった.まっ红な鸟が二羽草草の中からかかかに做えたようとびあがって雑木林の方に飞んでいくのを见かけただけだった.歩きながらNaokoはServantにIdoの话をしてくれた。

Try to get as close to the original translation as possible:

 Today, eighteen years later, I can still clearly recall the scenery of the grassland. The mild rain has been falling for several days in a row, completely washing away the dust in summer, and the mountain has a bright blue color. on the frozen blue sky. The sky is high and far away, staring at it makes my eyes hurt. The wind swept across the grasslands, brushed her hair, and then passed through the weeds. There was a rustling of leaves on the treetops, and a dog barking in the distance, faint and hazy, sounding like a portal from another world. There was no other sound. We heard nothing, and no one passed by. I saw two birds with red feathers flying timidly from the grassland to the weed forest. As we walked, Naoko was telling me about the well.

A brief explanation of the original text and the translation close to the original text:

"Norwegian Forest" (ノルウェイの森) is an early work of Haruki Murakami. At that time, the characteristics of Haruki Murakami's literary youth were relatively obvious, and he had a very clear awareness of writing style and style. That is to say, he pays great attention to writing style and style, and shows off obviously. That's it for the above paragraph.

But Haruki Murakami is Haruki Murakami after all, and his show off is very careful, and his writing is quite as good as the scenery description in "The Pillow" and Thoreau's "Walden Pond". The characteristic of this kind of landscape description is that, like a sketch from life, it tries its best to pursue clarity, simplicity, smoothness, abandons rhetoric or fancy, and pursues to present and express what one sees, hears, thinks and feels in detail.

Readers who understand Japanese can see that Haruki Murakami's writing is clean and neat, his language is simple and clear, his words are simple, and his sentence making is simple. presenting scenery and people). However, this kind of simplicity is so simple that readers can't help but sigh and marvel that the simple text written in this way is full of details that can be pleasing to the eye.

Whether reading the original text or the translation that is as close to the original text as possible, readers can clearly feel that every sentence and even every word written by Haruki Murakami here is carefully thought out and carefully crafted. . Reading such texts carefully and slowly can enable readers to broaden their horizons, re-examine their environment with the writer, re-examine their memories of the past, re-examine the scenery and people around them, and re-examine their own language expressions.

Lin Shaohua's translation:

Even today, after eighteen years of spring and autumn , I can still vividly remember the scenery of that grassland. Days of warm drizzle washed away the dust of summer. Pieces of hillsides are stacked with green and emerald green , earing miscanthus undulates under the golden October wind, and winding thin clouds cling to the frozen blue sky. Staring at it, the sky is boundless, but I feel a dull pain in my eyes . The breeze caressed the grass, slightly brushed her full head of hair , and then blew towards the miscellaneous forest. The leaves on the treetops whispered , and the barking of dogs approached from far away, faintly, as if coming from the entrance of another world. Otherwise, everything was silent. I didn't hear any sound in my ears , and no one brushed past me. I saw two fire-like little birds jumping up from the grass as if frightened, and flew towards the miscellaneous woods. Naoko told me the story of the well as she moved her feet. (The words in bold are added by the writer of this article)

Commentary on Lin Shaohua's translation:

If the original text or the translation that is close to the original text gives readers a fresh feeling, the feeling given by Lin Yi is obviously greasy. Comparing the original text or comparing the translation that tries to be as close as possible to the original text, it can be seen that Lin Shaohua is obviously continuously and habitually overreaching his abilities, using translation to show off his power, to add flavor to the original text, adding five-spice powder and star anise to the original text is thirteen Spiced with sesame oil, soy sauce, and olive oil, the refreshing original turns into a hodge-podge of the cliché, chop suey.

The original text is a simple "Eighteen Years", he obviously felt that it was not interesting enough, so he insisted on "Eighteen Degrees of Spring and Autumn"; the original text was a simple "rain", and he wanted to add oil and vinegar to make it into "Flying Rain"; the original text What he said was the fresh and vigorous "the mountain is rippling a very bright blue", and he replaced it with an inexplicable homemade fake antique [pieces of hillsides stacked with green and green]. (What does "Dieqing" mean? What does "Xiecui" mean?)

The ears of miscanthus are different from the wheat ears in the wheat fields. They are mostly isolated and high above the ground. When there is wind, they will sway back and forth. This kind of scenery description in the original text was arbitrarily changed by Lin Shaohua to describe the continuous "winding and undulating" of the mountains, which can be described as a typical misnomer. The "winding" in his so-called "winding thin cloud" is also not found in the original text, but his fabrication.

[Looking at the sky, but feeling a dull pain in the eyes] is a series of pretentious classical Chinese by the translator, plus sentence turns that are not in the original text, but the original text is very simple and thus very vivid and fluent. Just looking at it makes my eyes hurt." The original text is simply "wind", and he added more oil and vinegar and changed it to "Qingfeng"; the original text was "her hair", and he added more oil and vinegar and changed it to "full head of beautiful hair".

The original text said "leaves are rustling", he added oil and vinegar to become "russling whispers"; he produced "ruoyueruowu" which the original text did not say, and then colloquially "there is no other sound" in the original text We can't hear any sound." Changed to fake antiques, fake classical Chinese [otherwise everything is silent. There is no sound in my ears]. The original text said "a little red bird", but he changed it to "a little bird like a fire ball".

Lin Shaohua's embellishment is obviously self-righteous , pretending to understand, pretending to be smart. For example, Lin Shaohua, who obviously knew nothing about literary writing, didn't know that the repetition of the word "voice" in the original text here was not because the author lacked vocabulary, but because the author deliberately imitated spoken language, and spoken language is characterized by simple words and sentences with many repetitions.

In addition, Lin Shaohua, who has translated so many Haruki Murakami, is obviously a sound idiot who is very insensitive to literary language and even ordinary language. Silent. I don’t hear any sound in my ears] Such half-literal and half-white mixed sentences don’t match Haruki Murakami’s oral narrative at all, but it’s very similar to the fake literati satirized in Chinese TV, saying “Zi once said. . . . "

Lin Shaohua's constant embellishment is at best a creative translation, at worst it's a Buddha's head. To say that it is neutral is to embezzle the old and replace the old.

So, is it possible that the resulting flowers, trees, beams and columns are better than the original text?

Taking a step back, even if the translation is better than the original text, readers should ask a natural question next: Why doesn’t the translator create a fair competition with Haruki Murakami, but pretend to be Haruki Murakami? How about carrying out this kind of impostor creation?

This is a serious logical issue, but also a serious ethical and moral issue.

In fact, for readers on the upper track of literary reading (that is, readers with sufficient literary reading experience and taste), whether Lin Shaohua's expressive ability is better than that of Murakami Haruki, there is no suspense about the answer to this question. After reading the original text, after reading the translation as close as possible to the original text, and then reading Lin Shaohua's translation, the reader can clearly see that Lin is always trying to show himself to be better than the original author, and his writing style is more ingenious than the original, completely unaware of his self-righteous brilliance And cleverness is down-and-out bad, bad, fake, bad, bad.

Lin Shaohua is like a primary school student who just got a dictionary and a dictionary of idioms. He desperately and racks his brains to find or make up beautiful words and phrases. The flamboyant rhetoric is vulgar, and qualified writers will try their best to avoid it.

If Haruki Murakami's original text and the translation close to the original text are literary words, then Lin Shaohua's translation is fake literature. If reading Haruki Murakami's original text and translation close to the original text can make readers with literary taste happy, reading counterfeit and shoddy products like Lin Shaohua should make readers feel disgusted.

In the past, readers who did not understand Japanese had no choice but to deal with such poor and shoddy translations. Now with Google Translate and other AI translations, this kind of bad translation has become very easy to identify - just ask Google Translate or other AI translation software to translate the original text, and you can see the worst of this poor and shoddy translation. The obvious characteristics and fatal injuries are wanton embellishment, embedding flowers and plants, and shoddy.

Google Translate or other AI-powered translation software still leaves a lot to be desired, but at least so far, they won’t be embellishing, embedding, and shoddy.

Thank goodness for that. Thanks AI. (However, artificial intelligence also often has moments of chaos. This is another topic that needs to be said separately.)