Why is 《Camel Xiangzi》 loved by foreign readers

We know that at the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, the translator Lin Shu translated a large number of Western novels in classical Chinese, which became the enlightenment for many Chinese to understand Western literature. One noteworthy phenomenon is that when translating, the translator was not completely faithful to the original text, and some places even made major additions and changes to the original text.

These novels also opened the window to the vast world of Western literature for Qian Zhongshu when he was a teenager, and left a deep impression on him. When conducting academic research many years later, he compared the original text and the translated text, and believed that although some additions and changes in the translation did not match the original text, they added a lot of color to the translation and played a role in "anti-corruption". These rewritings with personal characteristics have objectively stimulated more readers' interest in reading in their own countries.

In fact, in the process of foreign dissemination of modern Chinese literature, there are also such "corrupt" translations. The translator did not strictly abide by the principle of faithfulness in translation, but the translation was quite successful in terms of dissemination effect. The spread of Lao She's famous book "Camel Xiangzi" in the United States is one example. The translator carried out a "creative retranslation" of the work. A review of this history will help us understand the complexity of translation today and promote Chinese literature to the world.

The novel "Camel Xiangzi" was originally serialized in "Universal Wind" in September 1936, and the whole novel was serialized in October 1937. This is the result of Lao She's many years of observing the lives of the working people at the bottom of the city, collecting materials for more than half a year, and writing behind closed doors for more than a year.

In 1945, Rickshaw Boy, the first English translation of "Camel Xiangzi", was published in New York, USA. Local literary critics immediately recommended this work in newspapers such as The New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, and The Atlantic Monthly, and it was loved by a large number of American readers. This is not only closely related to Lao She's exquisite language and art and the precise depiction of the customs of Peking at that time in his works, but also to the translation and adaptation strategy of the translator Ivan King.

Ivan King incorporated some local cultural elements from the United States at the time into "Camel Xiangzi." During the translation process, he even added roles, deleted the character dialogue, changed the main line and ending of the story, and increased the proportion of certain spiritual cultures actively advocated by the United States after World War II in the translation. There is such an evaluation in the recommendation words of the important recommendation magazine "Book of the Month Club News" translated by Ivan King:

"The ultimate criterion for testing the success of a novel is whether it can arouse our empathy." E·M·Foster (British novelist and literary critic) said. As long as you are still alive, you will most likely be deeply moved by the protagonist of this novel. His efforts for the humblest happiness will make sensitive readers shed tears of sympathy. Fate could not defeat him, and the human nature was revealed in him and finally won a big victory... Our five judges agreed that "Camel Xiangzi"—the work of a Chinese writer that has not been known to the American public until now— It is one of the most outstanding novels of our time.

This shows that the emotions, outlook on life, and secular concepts of the protagonist in Ivan King’s translation can all be in harmony with the spirit advocated or popular in American society at that time, allowing readers across the ocean to empathize with the protagonist. When translating, Ivan King chose to take the original book where Xiangzi found that Xiao Fuzi had hanged himself and went to a completely degenerate ending. It was adapted into Xiangzi rescued the dying Xiao Fuzi, and the two left together and found a free "reunion" ending. .

In this way, Ivan King conveyed to the American readers the wartime spirit of the Chinese people who still maintained a strong will to enterprising through the typical character-Xiangzi's successful deeds, and showed the humanistic touch of Chinese writers. . This gave effective spiritual inspiration to a large number of people living in poverty in the United States after the war.

Ivan King’s translation was a great success in the United States in the 1940s. This success was accompanied by a betrayal of the original language and cultural habits. But this loss is not permanent. The deleted content and language style of Rickshaw Boy are gradually added in the subsequent English translation of "Camel Xiangzi".

In 1979, 1981, and 2010, the United States published the translations of Jane James, Shi Xiaojing, and Ge Haowen respectively. Starting from the James version, the translation style gradually gave up catering to mainstream American concepts. It can be clearly seen from Ge Haowen's translation that the translation can be close to the Chinese cultural characteristics and spiritual connotations expressed in the original work. These four English translations of "Camel Xiangzi" span more than sixty years in time. Obviously, the process and effect of such continuous foreign translation deserve our attention. The earliest translations lowered the barriers for foreign readers to understand the work and aroused their interest in reading. Subsequent translations gradually increased the difficulty, allowing foreign readers to gradually enter the spiritual world of Chinese culture.

This continuous process of first occupying the literary market and then gradually infiltrating has laid the foundation for the presentation of a three-dimensional, multi-angled Chinese literary culture. When we take into account the uniqueness of cross-cultural communication and the very complicated characteristics of the textual connotation of Chinese literature, we can see that in the translation process, it is difficult for a single translation to take into account readers’ acceptance and understanding of all the spiritual cores and implied texts in the text. The cultural characteristics and artistic conception are fully grasped, and such a continuous foreign translation process can just make up for this. Therefore, when we spread Chinese culture and tell Chinese stories today, we might as well consider it as a systematic project. Translations with different emphases can play their different roles in different historical periods, and when they are superimposed, a richer and more complete text world can be presented.

The success of "Camel Xiangzi" translated by Ivan King laid the foundation for the subsequent translation and acceptance of this modern Chinese masterpiece in the United States, the Western world, and even the world. The translations of "Camel Xiangzi" published in French, German, Japanese and other countries also refer to the English translation to varying degrees. It can be said that the foreign translation and introduction of the Chinese modern classic novel "Camel Xiangzi" is a running-in paradigm in the process of Chinese modern literature going out, and it has historical inevitability. The cultural "resonance" emphasized and highlighted in translations of different periods and the spiritual "empathy" with readers of different eras are just a portrayal of the process of Chinese literature's gradual reshaping of cultural symbols in the forest of world culture. In this sense, the research on the acceptance of foreign readers of "Camel Xiangzi" not only has reference value for the study of translation of literary works, but also has research value for the external construction of the overall appearance of Chinese literature.