Commentaries

Chinese author (Chinese: “Pure in Heart”) also spelled Bing Xin, Wade-Giles romanization Ping-hsin, original name Xie Wanying

born October 5, 1900, Minhou, Fujian province, China died February 28, 1999, Beijing

Chinese writer of gentle, melancholy poems, stories, and essays that enjoyed great popularity.

Bingxin studied the Chinese classics and began writing traditional Chinese stories as a child, but her conversion to Christianity and her attendance at an American school in Beijing soon were reflected in the didactic, Western style of her writing. The short stories and poems that Bingxin published during her college years at Yanjing University in Beijing—lyrical pieces about childhood and nature, influenced by the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore—won her instant fame and a grant to study at Wellesley College in the United States, where she received an M.A. degree in 1926.

Bingxin returned to China in 1926 and published a collection of essays she had written abroad, Zhi xiaoduzhe (1926; “Letters to Young Readers”), which gained lasting popularity. Her short stories, which were often sentimental tales with young protagonists, were collected in Gugu (1932; “The Paternal Aunt”) and Donger guniang (1935; “Miss Donger”). Bing Xin shiji (“Collected Poems of Bing Xin”) was published in 1933. She continued to write throughout the 1940s and ’50s, producing works such as Guanyu nuren (1943; “About Women”) and Shisui xiaocha (1964; “Miscellaneous Essays”).

Bingxin wrote little after the early 1960s, but she became very active in cultural affairs under the communist government, especially in children’s literature. After the mid-1980s, however, she was officially criticized when she voiced her support for political reform in the famous liberal announcement “Open Letter of 33 Signers.” A selection of her works was published in English as The Photograph (1992).

冰心是一位具有女性意识的翻译家.鸦片战争后,受到西方的民权学说及男女平等观念的影响,冰心创作了很多具有女性意识的作品.阅读冰心的译本,可以发现冰 心独特的女性意识在其译文中得到了充分体现.受其女性意识的影响,冰心在其翻译中极力颂扬女性,消除原文中的性别歧视,提高女性的家庭社会地位.从性别视 角分析冰心的翻译观和翻译实践,发现西方女性意识传入中国后对冰心有一定影响.

对冰心诗歌创作的研究本无新意,但从译介学的角度对之加以论证的却不多见.本文在论述泰戈尔对冰心诗歌创作的影响实质上是郑译泰诗的影响的基础上,主要论述了阅读郑译本<飞鸟集>对冰心诗歌形式内容和语言意象的影响,并探讨了阅读译诗建立起来的翻译文学概念对冰心后来翻译思想和翻译实践的影响.



May 4th & Chinese Literature in Translation

By Lucas Klein, published May 4, 2009, 5:04p.m.

To commemorate the 90th anniversary of the May Fourth Movement, the South China Morning Post runs an article investigating

Left on the Shelf: Ninety years after the May 4 movement spawned a host of Chinese literary giants, Ben Blanchard examines why mainland writers remain largely unread internationally

As a tribute to the May Fourth Movement goes, it's no last-year's Sunday New York Times Book Review, featuring four new translations of Chinese literature, but then again, May Fourth doesn't fall on a Sunday this year.

What the South China Morning Post article does raise, implicitly at least, is the question of World Literature and its relationship to Chinese literature.

As the article notes,

The May 4 movement of 1919 started out as student protests against a decision at the Paris Peace Conference, after the first world war, to award Japan control of German concessions in China's Shandong province. It soon encompassed a broader debate about how China should modernise.

Since part of that modernization took place in the field of literature, bringing Chinese together with modern World Literature from the West, the 90th anniversary isn't a bad time to look back and take stock of how integrated Chinese Literature has become into the larger spheres of World Literature. But at least according to one newspaper article, the success has not been stellar.

Is this right? While I agree with the journalist that "Modern Chinese literature is at best a niche interest overseas," is that because it's Chinese, or because literature itself is also at best a niche interest? And as for who is to blame, the article cites both Chinese author Féng Jìcái 馮驥才 and Penguin China general manager Jo Lusby as decrying the lack of translators working from Chinese.

But looking at the Paper Republic roll-call, and thinking about how many translators we still haven't added to our directory, I can't agree that a dearth of translators is keeping contemporary Chinese literature away from readers.

No surprises here, but I see the publication industry--including the branch of journalism responsible for promoting and reviewing literature--as more accountable than any translator. When Lusby says, "There are some books I would love to do out of China, but I think it needs too much back story for a western reader to enjoy them in the way a Chinese reader reads them," I see yet another publisher underestimating both the intelligence and the interest of the general reader, to say nothing of the ability of translators to accommodate said back story.

Furthermore, when the article in question mentions only the recent Chinese writers who have earned some attention--from Gāo Xíngjiàn 高行健 to Mián Mián 棉棉--but does not offer a list of titles for interested readers to consult (how about a mention of the works of Féng Jìcái, to begin with? What about Chrysanthemums and Other Stories, translated by Susan Wilf Chen and Three-Inch Golden Lotus, translated by David Wakefield?), I have a hard time as a translator taking responsibility when I see newspapers running articles so irresponsibly.

So is Chinese literature still cut off from the centers of World Literature, and if so, why? Perhaps Paper Republic can offer what the South China Morning Post report failed to, which is input from a few translators.