Modern Selfhood in Translation by Limin Chi

Author:Limin Chi
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789811311567
Publisher: Springer Singapore

This sense of mission informed the brothers’ selection of the stories in the collection. For them, translation was a means of cultivating empathy and transforming national character. On the other hand, it constituted an important part of self-expression, which was arguably what set them apart from many other late Qing translators. Preoccupation with individual persons and human consciousness dominated the brothers’ translation activities following the publication of Collection of Short Stories from Abroad. As they became widely known in the late 1910s and early 1920s, their efforts at modern identity construction began to make a powerful impact on the New Culture scene. Zhou Zuoren’s essay “Human Literature” (Ren de wenxue), among many other writings, is construed by many as epitomizing the awakening of the May Fourth self. These will be further explored in Chap. 6.

Hong Kong-based translation scholar Lawrence Wang-chi Wong (2007: 219–20) puts the lack of appeal of Collection of Short Stories from Abroad down to three factors. First, the Zhou brothers were young and unknown to the reading public at the time of its publication. Second, the authors of the stories were generally not famous enough to arouse the readers’ interest. Third, the style of translation was unacceptable at the time. Wong goes on to claim that the third reason should be regarded as the most important of the three. Literary historian Chen Pingyuan (1997: 624) observes: “[In the late Qing] literal translation never became dominant; nor was it given adequate recognition in scholarship.” Therefore, literal translation, or zhiyi,25 was mostly denigrated in late Qing and early Republican China, and described as “irresponsible,” “hard to read,” “as tasteless as wax,” “incomprehensible” and “confusing” (ibid).

In the late 1890s and 1900s, the majority of Chinese readers, who had an attachment to traditional Chinese literature, lacked foreign language skills and were neither interested nor able to compare the faithfulness of the translations to their originals. They tended to favour free translations such as those produced by Lin Shu. Therefore, Chinese translators made every endeavour to water down the foreignness of source texts in order to cater to the habits and tastes of their readers. The Zhou brothers’ translations before the publication of Collection of Short Stories from Abroad had followed this trend.26 In the late 1900s, they reevaluated their translation approach and chose to follow the linguistic and literary styles of the source text. Lu Xun (1981(10): 155) wrote in the preface of Collection of Short Stories from Abroad, first published in 1909:It was with great prudence that we edited and published the book, in the hope of not losing the original flavour. New techniques in foreign scholarship will be imported to China from now on.

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