5. Parody, Translation, and Chinese Diglossia
5.4 Text Excerpt: Analysis and Discussion
5.4.2 Text Excerpt (Wang)
to analysis carried out upon the four English translations that follows.
In summary, analysis of the four English translations will focus upon representation of the following four aspects: firstly, the change in voice at the phrase ‘夫文童者,將 來恐怕要變秀才者也’; ‘It is said, one who is a young scholar, it seems, will be one who becomes a talented literati’; secondly, the hybridity of the villagers’ voice as it is presented in this particular phrase and in the use of the informal ‘爹爹’; ‘dads’;
thirdly, variation between narrator and character voice as it exists in the final sentence of the passage; and finally, contrast in nature between the narrative discourse and the actual subject matter being narrated so as to present a parody of traditional, Chinese historiographical conventions.
5.4.2 Text Excerpt (Wang 1941)
Wang’s 1941 translation will be the first to be discussed. As analysis will
demonstrate, the translation lacks any variation of register whatever and obscures somewhat the change in voice at the sentence in question:17
阿Q又很自尊,所有未莊的居民,全不在他眼睛裡,甚而至於對於兩位
“文童”也有以為不值一笑的神情。夫文童者,將來恐怕要變秀才者也;
趙太爺錢太爺大受居民的尊敬,除有錢之外,就因為都是文童的爹爹,
而阿Q在精神上獨不表格外的崇奉,他想:我的兒子會闊得多啦!
(Lu Xun 2002:3)
Ah Q was very proud and held all the inhabitants of Wei in contempt, even to the extent of sneering at the two students. Now a student might one day pass his examination and become a licentiate. The reason Their Honors Chao and Chien were so esteemed by the villagers was that, besides their wealth, they were fathers of students. But in spirit Ah Q had no special regard for them. “My son would be much better than they,”
he would assure himself.
(Wang 1941: 82)
17I have included the original text before each translated text in order to facilitate comparison.
As can be seen in the excerpt, whereas Lu Xun’s original demonstrated — through a change of register — a clear change of voice at the phrase, ‘夫文童者,將來恐怕要 變秀才者也,’ Wang’s version (in bold above) does not show any variation of register.
Moreover, it is unclear who could possibly be expressing the belief that, ‘a student might one day pass his examination and become a licentiate’. To be fair, since the phrase is rendered in a declarative form it is clearly offset from the rest of the narrative. The syntax of the statement, however, does not offer the reader any clue as to whom could have spoken it, nor does there exist any hybridity within the statement itself. Wang, quite uninterestingly, renders the informal ‘爹爹’ as ‘fathers’
(underlined above).
Wang’s translation really misses the mark when it comes to recreating the linguistic variation, the change in voice, and the diglossic nature represented in the original.
When Ah Q quite articulately thinks to himself, “My son would be much better than they,” (in bold and underlined above) the reader is left to wonder how it is that Ah Q, an uneducated peasant, is seemingly as well spoken as the narrator, an classically trained historian. Also unfortunate for the reader of Wang’s translation, the
unremarkable, average‐sounding voice of the narrator makes it difficult for the work to re‐create any of the parodic narrative discourse used in the original to poke fun at Chinese traditional historiographical conventions.
5.4.3 Text Excerpt (the Yangs 1956)
The second translation to be discussed is Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang’s translation.
Published in 1956 by the Foreign Languages Press as The True Story of Ah Q, the translation reads as follows:
阿Q又很自尊,所有未莊的居民,全不在他眼睛裡,甚而至於對於兩位
“文童”也有以為不值一笑的神情。夫文童者,將來恐怕要變秀才者也;
趙太爺錢太爺大受居民的尊敬,除有錢之外,就因為都是文童的爹爹,
而阿Q在精神上獨不表格外的崇奉,他想:我的兒子會闊得多啦!
(Lu Xun 2002:3)
Ah Q, again, had a very high opinion of himself. He looked down on all the inhabitants of Weichuang, thinking even the two young "scholars" not worth a smile, though most young scholars were likely to pass the official examinations. Mr. Chao and Mr. Chien were held in great respect by the villagers, for in addition to being rich they were both the fathers of young scholars. Ah Q alone showed them no exceptional deference, thinking to himself, "My sons may be much greater!"
(Yang 1956:82)
The voice of the villagers in this passage is entirely undistinguishable from the voice of the narrator. The only hint that, perhaps, the sentence taken to be the voice of the villagers, highlighted in bold above, is in any way different from the rest of the text is that it is offset by a comma; but, in fact, it is difficult to discern whether the
utterance belongs to the narrator, the villagers, or, perhaps, even Ah Q, himself.
Moreover, Lu Xun’s informal ‘爹爹’; ‘dads’, as well as the mix of literary and vernacular in the villagers’ voice, which worked so well to highlight the ‘awkward hybrid construction’ of their worldview, are entirely absent in the Yangs’ version. It may be argued that the villagers’ voice juxtaposes a vernacular ‘though most young scholars were likely to pass the official examinations’ (in bold above) with the more colloquial ‘not worth a smile’ (underlined above). However, I would suggest that the relative distance of register between the two does not seem to befit Catford’s
“equivalence across varieties” or Pym’s syntagmatic alteration of distance.
Moreover, the language of the Yangs’ narrator is not entirely different from that of Ah Q. This is an issue that Jeremy Tambling refers to in his claim that the Yangs’
translation of The True Story of Ah Q fails to ‘register the different modes in which Lu Xun writes literature in the vernacular’ (2007:5). As a result, contrast between narrative discourse and subject matter as used in the original to set up a parody of traditional, Chinese historiographical conventions fails to materialize in this sampling of the Yangs’ translation.
In order to avoid sounding prescriptive, I hope that perhaps an example of the criticism levelled against the Yangs’ work will help to suggest a possible reason for their choice to disregard the linguistic variation of the original. As mentioned previously, Leo Ou‐fan Lee has criticized the Yangs for overly abridging and, thus, providing “a partial and often erroneous impression of the original work”
(1985b:565). Lee also has blamed the Foreign Language Press (FLP) and Panda Books — the two main publishers for whom the Yangs worked throughout their careers — for “irresponsible truncation” (ibid.). In a paper dealing with the issue of state commissioned publishing and translation, Bonnie McDougall explains that the Beijing FLP was modelled after the Foreign Languages Publishing House established in Moscow in 1931 (2009:3). As with its counterpart in the USSR, the Beijing FLP was a government‐funded and government‐run publishers commissioned to translate and publish in a number of foreign languages national literature, political (communist party) literature and books on all subjects Chinese (ibid.). Established in Beijing in 1952, as McDougall describes it, “the public mission of the Bureau [FLP]
was always directed by the political line adopted by the CCP [Chinese Communist Party]” (2009:5). McDougall claims that translation under the direction of the FLP
“was neither source‐oriented nor reader‐oriented,” but “served the self‐defined short‐term interests of the state as producer (2009:38). In his autobiography, White Tiger: An Autobiography of Yang Xianyi, Yang Xianyi explains that Liu Zunqi, the first head of the FLP and a veteran Party member, recruited him in 1952 to act as head translation consultant to the FLP (2002:184-185). The Yangs employment by the FLP and, in particular, Yang Xianyi’s position within the ranks of the state-run agency would more than likely have had some influence upon translation choices made by the pair.
With particular regard to the Yangs’ choice not to translate the linguistic variation of the original, I also would like to cite Merle Goldman’s (1982) discussion of the CCP’s political use of Lu Xun and his work. According to Goldman, the CCP carried out a double‐edged — simultaneously praising the man while condemning his work — deification of Lu Xun as an attempt to win over Lu Xun’s readership while continuing to promote Party ideology (1982:446‐447). Mao Zedong eulogized Lu Xun as “the
chief commander of China's cultural revolution,” and claimed him to be “not only a great man of letters, but a great thinker and revolutionary” (ibid.). However, according to Goldman, the popular Party line with respect to Lu Xun’s work — in particular, his satirical style — was that it was inappropriate to the times and harmful to the establishment of communist ideals (1982:447). Of particular interest to the present paper’s suggestion that Translation Studies take a more realistic — diglossic or heteroglossic instead of monolingual — view of linguistic variation is Goldman’s description of the CCP’s position with respect to literature: “no longer was literature to reflect life as it is or as the individual saw it as exemplified in Lu Xun's work, but as it will be and as the Party and Mao saw it” (ibid.). In other words, the heterogeneity of voice and language within Lu Xun’s writing was to be replaced by the homogeneity of the Party’s ‘monoglossic,’ if you will, interpretation of the world.
5.4.4 Text Excerpt (Lyell 1990)
Moving the focus back to analysis of the texts, the next excerpt comes from Lyell’s 1990 translation published by the University of Hawaii Press as Diary of a madman and other stories. Lyell’s translation is quite different to the previous two
translations in that it reflects a discernable effort on the part of the translator to represent the linguistic variation present in the original. As is demonstrated in the discussion presented above, comparison between the various translations is not meant to be prescriptive or critical of the work, but, instead, is offered as a means through which to highlight differences in translator choice and ideology.
阿Q又很自尊,所有未莊的居民,全不在他眼睛裡,甚而至於對於兩位
“文童”也有以為不值一笑的神情。夫文童者,將來恐怕要變秀才者也;
趙太爺錢太爺大受居民的尊敬,除有錢之外,就因為都是文童的爹爹,
而阿Q在精神上獨不表格外的崇奉,他想:我的兒子會闊得多啦!
(Lu Xun 2002:3)
Since he thought so well of himself, Ah Q considered the other villagers simply beneath his notice. He went so far with this that he even looked down his nose at the village’s two Young Literati. He didn’t realize, of course, that up there in the rarefied world of scholar‐officialdom those whom one doth Young Literati name can darn well get to be those whom one must Budding Talents proclaim – if you don’t keep an eye on them. That’s why Old Master Qian and Old Master Zhao were so all‐fired respected in the village: they were daddies to those two Young Literati – and rich to boot. Ah Q, however, was less than impressed. “My son’s gonna be a lot richer.”
(Lyell 1990:108)
Analyzing the passage in question, we immediately observe a hybridity in the voice of the villagers. Speaking in the voice of the villagers of Weizhuang, Lyell’s narrator proclaims in an overtly literary tone, “those whom one doth Young Literati name (can darn well get to be) those whom one must Budding Talents proclaim.” In the middle of this lofty utterance, which Lyell has offset explicitly with his use of italics (as above), the villager’s ‘slangy, American’18 vernacular resurfaces (in bold and underlined above), further foregrounding the juxtaposition of language varieties within the single voice. Not only is the relative distance of register between these two varieties quite well defined, but also the literary styled variety used may be regarded as a quasi‐H variety of English that has not been used in spoken English since well before the time — early 20th century — in which the novel was set; thus, maintaining Ferguson’s claim of disparity of function between H and L varieties.
As mentioned in Huang’s “The Inescapable Predicament,” Lyell’s narrator speaks, throughout the novella, in a colloquial, slangy, American tone as well (1990:5). In the case of the passage above, this makes it difficult to discern the narrator’s voice from one that, potentially, could represent either the voice of Ah Q or of the
villagers. That having been said, however, we may, in Lyell’s defence, suggest that there is variation in degree of ‘colloquiallity’ between what we know as the
narrator’s voice and what we have seen in the original is the hybridized voice of the villagers. The problem is that this assessment of degree of colloquiallity, in this case, is confounded by the fact that Lyell’s narrator has such a propensity for the
18As mentioned earlier, Tambling calls Lyell’s vernacular “American, racy and slangy” (2007:5).
vernacular. Case in point, the following phrases underlined in the passage above:
‘went so far’; ‘looked down his nose at’; ‘keep an eye on them’; ‘so all‐fired respected’; and ‘rich to boot’. It is difficult to judge whether or not these
colloquialisms are actually appreciably different in register to the two utterances,
‘can darn well get to be’ and ‘daddies’ — presumably, meant to represent the L‐
variety aspect of the villagers’ voice.
Finally, although the voice of Lyell’s narrator is presented in the vernacular, his representation of Ah Q’s voice is such that the reader is, at least, still able to
recognize the difference between the two. The use of ‘gonna’ in the representation of Ah Q’s mental discourse (underlined above) is, in fact, a level of colloquialism that Lyell’s narrator does not ‘lower’ himself to at any point in the novella. In this sense, Lyell’s translation strategy can be said to work on a level of relative difference — although it is overly complicated — that is consistent with Pym’s syntagmatic alteration of distance and Catford’s “equivalence across varieties”. However, my own feeling is that Lyell’s translation choice also may be complicated by a desire to represent Lu Xun’s vernacular style through easily recognizable, stereotypical markers associated with popular “American” vernacular of the early part of the 20th century — close to the time in which the novel was set.
5.4.5 Text Excerpt (Lovell 2009)
In clear contrast to the previous paragraph’s discussion of Lyell’s slangy, American style, the present section will now focus upon the lofty, British style of Julia Lovell’s narrator. In 2009, Penguin Books published Lovell’s The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China. It is the most recent translation of Ah Q Zhengzhuan. Lovell’s translation is as follows:
阿Q又很自尊,所有未莊的居民,全不在他眼睛裡,甚而至於對於兩位
“文童”也有以為不值一笑的神情。夫文童者,將來恐怕要變秀才者也;
趙太爺錢太爺大受居民的尊敬,除有錢之外,就因為都是文童的爹爹,
而阿Q在精神上獨不表格外的崇奉,他想:我的兒子會闊得多啦!
(Lu Xun 2002:3)
Ah‐Q had a robust sense of his own self‐worth, placing the rest of Weizhuang far beneath him in the social scale. Even the village’s two aspiring young scholars – the Zhao and the Qian sons – he considered with haughty contempt. In time, they could both reasonably be expected to get through at least the lowest rung of the official examinations – the path to power and riches. Their fathers, the venerable Mr Zhao and Mr Qian, therefore received the village’s craven respect not just for their personal wealth, but also for their son’s academic prospects. Only Ah‐Q remained invulnerable to the glamour of their future promise: My son will be much richer than them! He thought to himself.
(Lovell 2009: 84)
As with Lyell’s translation, Lovell’s version is clearly working to represent the linguistic variation found in the original. Unlike Lyell, however, Lovell’s problem is not an overly vernacularly styled narrator but an overly literary vernacular. Lovell’s narrator expresses himself in a similarly pompous and lofty style to that of Lu Xun’s narrator. This can be seen in the following phrases underlined in the passage above:
‘robust sense of his own self‐worth’; ‘considered with haughty contempt’; ‘the village’s craven respect’; ‘academic prospects’; and ‘remained invulnerable to’. The highly literary register of Lovell’s narrator helps to represent the parodic
juxtaposition of, as Huang (1990) calls it, a biographer using the ‘elegant’ discourse and a story of an entirely ‘insignificant person’. However, Lovell has also coupled this with a vernacular voice that is, perhaps, overly high in register. As a result, the unique diglossic relationship that exists between H and L varieties of Chinese does not clearly emerge. In the case of the villagers’ voice, for example, Lovell seems to have chosen to present the first part of the statement – ‘they could both reasonably be expected to get through at least the lowest rung of the official examinations’ – in the narrator’s voice. She then offsets what is presumably the villagers’ view – ‘the path to power and riches’ – from the rest of the sentence by way of hyphen.
Unfortunately, because the utterance is not entirely different in register from that of the narrator, the reader is, again, unsure of whether this is the view of the narrator
or of someone else. Moreover, the hybridity of the villagers’ voice present in the original is in no way re‐created here in Lovell’s translation. Perhaps, if Lovell were to present the entire sentence in more of a declarative form, similar to what we saw in Wang’s version, she could then lower slightly the register of ‘power and riches’ to
or of someone else. Moreover, the hybridity of the villagers’ voice present in the original is in no way re‐created here in Lovell’s translation. Perhaps, if Lovell were to present the entire sentence in more of a declarative form, similar to what we saw in Wang’s version, she could then lower slightly the register of ‘power and riches’ to