Is the "Vanity Fair" translated by Yang Bi qualified?

Yang Bi is a famous translator. Her translation of "Vanity Fair" is also a famous translation in the field of foreign literature translation in contemporary China.

Today, however, an obvious fact cannot be avoided, nor should it continue to be avoided. This fact is that the title of "Vanity Fair" translated by Yang Bi is unqualified.

Why is Yang Bi's translation of "Vanity Fair" unqualified?

There can be two explanations. One is a very clear and simple explanation, and the other is a slightly more professional, but also more clear and detailed explanation.

Here, let me start with a simple explanation that is particularly clear and clear.

For example, there is a Chinese writer who wrote a book whose title is an idiom allusion "A deer is a horse". A German translator translated the title of the book as How the Gestapo Threatened the Public; an Italian translator translated it as The Rhetoric of Mussolini.

There is no doubt that the virtual German and Italian translators here are creative and their creative translations are German and Italian. However, we still have to say that their translation was substandard. why? because

(1) This translation is so outrageous that it does not match the original text at all; translation is translation, and the translator should strictly abide by its own professional norms, and should not rewrite the original text, let alone do suspicious creations away from the original text; it is not impossible for the translator to create , but translation and creation are two industries, they should not be confused, and should not be created in the name of translation; this is like a heart surgeon who is not allowed to sell Chinese cabbage, but should not sell Chinese cabbage while performing an operation ; As long as we see a heart surgeon who is selling Chinese cabbage while performing surgery, and keeps greeting customers, and keeps putting down his scalpel to collect money and change, we can conclude that his surgery will not be done well, and his Cabbage will not sell well either; moreover,

(2) Such outrageous translation will also dig a hole for the translation itself, and also cause confusion to the readers; because the original Chinese work of "Referring to a Deer as a Horse" is probably about horses and deer; When the above-mentioned translation out of the original text will make the translator fall into the pit dug by himself, thus revealing that their so-called creative translation cannot justify itself; Say Gestapo or Mussolini? Why are we talking about horses and deer again?

The 19th-century British novelist Thackeray's masterpiece Vanity Fair, praised by Marx, was translated by Yang Bi as "Vanity Fair", and this translation has similar problems.

People who approve or praise Yang Bi's translation say that her translation is creative and Chinese, just as the fictitious German translator's translation of "A Deer as a Horse" into "How the Gestapo Threats the Public" has German characteristics.

The reason why the German translator is not qualified has been explained above. Now to explain why Yang Bi's translation of Vanity Fair into "Vanity Fair" failed, a slightly more professional explanation is needed. The good news here is that the professional explanations are not difficult to understand and can definitely be understood in plain language.

The title of Vanity Fair is also a classic from Western language and literature. The word Vanity comes from the Christian scriptures. Specifically, a famous verse from the Bible, Old Testament, Ecclesiastes: "Void of vanity, all things are vanity."

This biblical verse is arguably familiar in the West (and among Christians and many non-Christians in the Chinese world), and its English translation is:

Vanity of vanities and all is vanity;

French is:

Vanité des vanités, tout est vanité;

German is:

Eitelkeit der Eitelkeiten, alles eitel;

Spanish is:

Vanidad de vanidades, todo es vanidad;

Latin is:

Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas.

Readers who know nothing about English, French, German, Spanish, or Latin can easily notice that the translations in these different languages have obvious repetitions (the repetition is "void") just like the Chinese translations. We know that repetition is an important rhetorical device for the purpose of prominence and emphasis.

After explaining the source of vanity, let's talk about the title of Vanity Fair. The title of the book comes from another masterpiece of English literature, The Pilgrim's Progress, a Christian fable published in 1678 (also considered the first English novel).

"Pilgrim's Progress" is about the arduous journey of Christians who experience various temptations, obstacles and trials in the secular world to reach the kingdom of heaven; it mentions that a town that Christians have experienced is called Vanity, a town that is open all year round. The market (fair) is called Void City, Vanity Fair.

When referring to the Void City, John Bunyan, author of Pilgrim's Progress, went on to write:

As the wise have said, everything is vanity.

Bunyan then lists passages of scriptures in the Bible that speak of vanity, which also includes another famous passage from the Old Testament, Ecclesiastes:

I look at all the work of my hands, and the success of my labor. Who knows it is all vanity, all chasing after the wind, and useless under the sun.

The author of Vanity Fair's novel, Thackeray, is a devout Christian, and the title of the novel thus contains allusions to the classics of the Bible and Christian fables. Yang Bi obviously did not take this into account when translating the novel, or did not consider it deeply or sufficiently.

Yang Bi's sister, famous scholar and translator Yang Jiang wrote in a preface to Yang Bi's translation in 1959: "The name "Vanity Fair" comes from the Chinese novel "The Mirror of Flowers", "just borrowed as the title of this novel. translation".

Unfortunately, using "Vanity Fair" as the translation name of the novel Vanity Fair is not good, but bad, because the original Vanity comes from other people's allusions, and if you leave other people's allusions and start anew, it will inevitably lead to awkwardness, and the donkey's lips are not right. mouth.

On the one hand, the so-called donkey's lips are not the horse's mouth. On the one hand, the theme of Thackeray's novel is that those who are chasing after fame and fortune are all empty, and they are all chasing the wind. The original text focuses on "empty", while Vanity Fair The focus is on "fame and fortune", and the vanity of fame and fortune is a later story; on the other hand, it also means that the original text not only wrote Vanity in the title of the book, but also clearly wrote vanitas vanitatum (the void of the void) in Latin again at the end of the novel. to emphasize this theme.

Yang Bi used "Vanity Fair" to translate the title of the book Vanity Fair. At the beginning, the reader's ignorance or carelessness can be used to get past it, but when he encounters vanitas vanitatum (the void of the void) in the finale of the novel, he enters passive embarrassment. situation.

So, in order to get rid of this predicament, Yang Bi took a very ugly trick. This is to use the creation of catching wind and shadow to play sloppy eyes, translating vanitas vanitatum as "Alas, fame and wealth, all emptiness!"

In my opinion, there are only two reliable explanations for this apparently messy translation; 1. Yang Bi can't understand Latin, so he doesn't bother to ask and look it up; or, 2. Yang Bi knows that the translation of the title is wrong, But she chose not to correct obvious mistakes.

I am very curious and very curious to know how someone willing to defend Yang Bi (as well as someone who has greatly praised the famous scholar Qian Zhongshu for guiding his sister-in-law Yang Bi's translation) will defend her on this issue.

Needless to say, such translations are problematic.

According to today's professional translation standards, this kind of translation out of the original text is uncontroversially unqualified, so it will not be accepted by the United Nations, nor will it be accepted by a regular law firm, nor will it be accepted by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Accepted by the Central Compilation and Translation Bureau of the Communist Party of China, it will not even be accepted by the tabloids in orbit. When taking basic translation courses, if the teachers are competent, they will not accept this kind of inexplicable student translation.

Imagine, if a Western translator translates "The Mirror of Flowers" into "Gone with the Wind" (borrowing the name of a once-popular American novel, also known as "Gone with the Wind"), the Chinese must scold this kind of Translation is shit. However, Yang Bi used the terms of old Chinese novels to translate other people's novel titles from Christian classics, but so many Chinese people applauded. I think this nonchalant double standard can only come from the limited vision of the frog at the bottom of the well.

When translating a famous foreign book, it turns out that even the title of the book is translated incorrectly. This kind of mistake can be described as serious. It's like you're telling the world that you're good at hosting and making kosher feasts, but people ask you to hold such a feast, and the first dish you serve to your guests in front of everyone's eyes is a steaming hot one. Braised pig head, completely unaware that people who believe in Judaism think pigs are unclean animals and cannot be eaten.

Yang Bi's translation of Vanity Fair made such a big mistake, perhaps because of a lack of necessary knowledge, or because of a wrong judgment. Whatever the truth was, her translation was substandard.

However, her unqualified translation has been accepted by the Chinese literary translation field for a long time (the first edition of Yang Bi's Vanity Fair translation was in 1957), which undoubtedly shows that the translation standards of the Chinese literary translation field have been low-grade for a long time. .

Chinese literary translation has long been a rare good translation, and unqualified translations are like a torrent of floods, flooding into disasters, making uninformed readers easily fooled. directly related to the professional translation standards.

The Chinese literary community recognizes this low-grade, loose translation standard that lacks seriousness and professionalism. It is equivalent to a country's professional standards for cardiac surgery that allow surgeons to sell Chinese cabbage while performing operations. Needless to say, the level of cardiac surgery in the country must remain low for a long time.

In other words, a heart surgeon who believes that he can do two things with one heart, that he can sell Chinese cabbage smoothly while performing a successful thoracotomy, cannot be a good doctor, nor a good one. Cabbage seller.

If it is possible to compare the need for meticulous, delicate, and precise literary translation to cardiac surgery, and Yang Bi to be a surgeon, then we have already seen that while she was performing surgery, she sold Chinese cabbage, which led her to be the first in surgery. The knife went in the wrong place - it was supposed to make an incision on the patient's left chest, but she cut the patient's right eyeball with one knife.

Of course, we can say that this is likely to be an unintentional, accidental blunder that can be forgiven. But the premise of forgiveness is that she will have a good operation next, and finally successfully underwent a cardiovascular bypass (although the patient also paid a heavy price for the right eye to be scrapped).

But can Yang Bi in her translation create something akin to the miracle of selling Chinese cabbage while doing heart surgery and doing it well?

Logic tells us she can't. No translation can.

However, from the point of view of scientific research, take-for-granted logic is worthless, and empirical research is worthwhile. Such research will be the task of another article.

After translating the title of the novel Vanity Fair wrong, will Yang Bi translate the novel's text well, or basically well? This is indeed an interesting question.

Finally I want to say that, to be fair, it's a little unfair to say "Yang Bi translation Vanity Fair failed". Vanity Fair later also has Rong Rude's translation published by Shanghai Translation Publishing House. Rong's translation is generally more accurate than Yang's translation, and it also corrects many mistakes in Yang's translation, but it also translates Vanity Fair into "Vanity Fair", which shows that the translator Rong Rude is also unclear about the title of the novel. The origin and meaning of vanity in .

Rong Rude wrote in his "preface to the translation", "(The author Thackeray) used Latin at the end of the book to exclaim 'Vanity Fair, Vanity Fair, everything is nothing but a void!'" At least in Latin. As far as the translation of "vanitas vanitatum" is concerned, Rong Rude's creations are on par with, or even better than, Yang Bi.

To be able to translate the "Void of Void" in the original text into "Vanity Fair, Vanity Fair, everything is nothing but a void" is indeed a creation. But this creation is closer to fiction (and shoddy fiction) than translation.

Fiction is the right of the novelist, but not the right of the translator. When doing heart surgery, it is true that Chinese cabbage or canola should not be sold at the same time.

One chicken can eat two, but one heart cannot be used for two. When chasing two rabbits at the same time, only one cannot catch up.

Postscript: A series of articles have been published before pointing out various mistakes in Yang Bi's translation, which should be emphasized now, but any translation error is inevitable. No gold is pure, no human being is perfect, and there is no translation that is absolutely infallible in this world. Saying someone is a perfect translator must be a fraud.

In addition, although there are various mistakes in Yang Bi's translation, the translation left by Yang Bi shows that she is still a more serious translator after all, and her translation is basically good, and often wonderful. She is different from many of today's translators who single-mindedly regard translation as a fraudulent business.

It should be noted that the comparison between Yang Bi and fraudulent translation here is not to insult Yang Bi, but to reflect a sad basic fact or reality - in a field where liars are piled up, made into films, and become the mainstream, a person As long as you are more serious, you can stand out from the crowd, even the big crane.

While acknowledging that Yang Bi is a relatively good translator or even a very good translator, future generations should also understand that there is no problem with the flaws of the white jade, but the flaws do not hide the beauty; The shortcomings are not to be clearly recognized but to be worshipped, or to be left behind, not to make progress, or even to be foolish.

references:

[1] Yang Bi. Vanity Fair [M]. Beijing: People's Literature Publishing House, 2014.

[2] Thackery W. Vanity Fair [M]. New York, NY: Random House, 1950.

[3] Bunyan J. The Pilgrim's Progress [OL]. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/131