译者匠心:中国文学的对外翻译

Translation of Chinese Literature: Stories and Culture

2016年5月25日凌晨,一团在中国文坛燃烧了一个多世纪的＂生命之火＂悄然熄灭。105岁的杨绛先生离世,＂我们仨＂终于在天堂团聚。

Madam Yang Jiang, the well-known writer and translator, who was famous for translating Don Quixote from Spanish to Chinese, died in Beijing this May. She pointed translation serves two masters, the original work and native reader. This issue, we have stories about 3 translators, Sidney Shapiro, Roger T. Ames and Wolfgang Kubin. Sidney Shapiro translated Outlaws of the Marsh into English, which tells over100 men and women who fled persecution to band together on a marsh-girt mountain in what today is Shandong Province during the Song dynasty. Sidney Shapiro said the most difficult part is to understand the person's thoughts, incentive and reactions in a society hundreds of years ago who are under the influence of Confucianism and Buddhism. Professor Roger T. Ames, one of America's most distinguished Confucian scholars, from the Department of Philosophy, University of Hawaii, believes that many Western words and categories are inappropriate for Chinese ideas, and that Western translations of many Chinese key concepts should stop. For example, filial piety is not xiao. The Chinese concept 'xiao' has little to do with piety in a Christian sense of the word; 'Tian' is not heaven, providence or God, which are used to describe the omniscient and omnipotent God in English. 'Tian' means life and growth of all creatures.