{"id":31132,"date":"2021-08-25T16:00:14","date_gmt":"2021-08-25T14:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/?p=31132"},"modified":"2021-08-24T19:36:33","modified_gmt":"2021-08-24T17:36:33","slug":"xin-%e4%bf%a1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/en\/xin-%e4%bf%a1\/","title":{"rendered":"XIN \u4fe1"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"project":[353,795],"project_type":[743],"class_list":["post-31132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","project-online-publications","project-untranslatable","project_type-themes"],"acf":{"bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","custom_color_css_variable":"","content_type":[{"acf_fc_layout":"content_txt","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"txt_cols":"is-1-txtcol","txt":"The nineteenth-century scholar YAN Fu (\u4e25\u590d) admirably laid out the most influential Chinese translation theories, and the first principle is XIN<\/em> (\u4fe1). XIN means \u00bbtrustworthy of what the text says.\u00ab Obviously, this principle demands that the translation be faithful to the original. However, this is often problematic when it comes to idioms and poetic images. Inspired by the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur\u2019s idea of untranslatability and approximation, I would, by way of anecdotes, propose a new interpretation of XIN as \u00bbauthenticity.\u00ab\r\n\r\nIn his book On Translation<\/em>,1<\/sup> Ricoeur introduces notions of translation as \u00bbwork of mourning\u00ab and \u00bbwork of remembering.\u00ab For Ricoeur, languages are a priori untranslatable into each other. However, this is not a point of despair, but rather one of acceptance and possibility. As the translator \u00bbmourns\u00ab the inevitable loss of the original text, s\/he also \u00bbremembers\u00ab the vision of the text and imparts, or more technically, \u00bbapproximates\u00ab it into another language. Herein lies a kind of \u00bblinguistic hospitability\u00ab \u2013 welcoming the foreign text into the home of another language.\r\n\r\nRicoeur highlights some of the fundamental questions in translation that resonate with me as a literary translator. Should I translate an idiom literally into a hodgepodge of words that might not make much sense in the receiving culture, so that the foreignness could be preserved? What about an image in a poem that sets off a constellation of associations in the original text, but becomes bland in the target language, if rendered word for word? How do we, in our everyday practice, \u00bbmourn\u00ab a text and its departing culture, and let a translated text \u00bbremember\u00ab in the receiving culture? The more I contemplate this, the more inadequate I find the interpretation of XIN as faithfulness and trustworthiness.\r\n\r\nFrom my experience, rather than faithfully translating an idiom into a literal word-hoard, a transformation of the idiom to a comparable one that evokes similar meaning or emotion might be a solution. Similarly, an image should ignite close feelings or intensity for the reader in both cultures. In this way, the translated text could stay approximately true, or in other words, authentic.\r\n\r\nTake this line from the Chinese poet Zhu Zhu, which I have translated into English.\r\n

\u6211 \u770b \u89c1 \u8fc7\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u751f\u6d3b\u00a0 \u00a0 \u7684\u00a0 \u5168 \u90e8\u00a0 \u00a0 \u8272\u5f69\u3002<\/p>\r\n

I see past indicator\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 life \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u2019s\u00a0 \u00a0all\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 colors<\/span><\/p>\r\n

My translation: I saw all the brilliance of this life.<\/span><\/p>\r\nThe context of this line is wind blowing every curtain on the street, and the poet reflects and has a revelation. \u00bbColors\u00ab sounds either bland, or a bit unclear, as to whether it denotatively refers to \u00bbtrue meaning\u00ab or \u00bbintentions.\u00ab What Zhu Zhu meant here is in fact straight forward, \u00bbcolors\u00ab in the sense of wonderful things in life. Instead of \u00bbcolors,\u00ab \u00bbbrilliance\u00ab might be a quick fix to the problem. \u00bbBrilliance\u00ab is not a literal translation of the original, but stands closer to the original in its emotional impact. Here\u2019s another line from Zhu Zhu:\r\n

\u2026\u4ece.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u4efb \u4f55 \/ \u535a \u7269 \u9986\u00a0 \u00a0\u7684\u00a0 \u00a0\u7a97\u53e3\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u5411<\/p>\r\n

\u2026 from\u00a0 \u00a0any \/ museum\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u2019s \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0window\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0toward<\/span><\/p>\r\n

\u5916\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u770b,\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u603b\u662f\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u7f8e\u4e3d\u7684\u3002<\/p>\r\n

outside \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0see\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0always \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0beautiful<\/span><\/p>\r\n

My translation: peering \/ from every museum window, it is beautiful out and out.<\/span><\/p>\r\nThe challenge here is not about choosing the most appropriate word, rather, how to make this typical line from Zhu Zhu understatedly poetic. A literal translation in English seems lackluster. In this poem, Zhu Zhu is making a statement that Chinese poets should not be expected to just write political poetry, and there is so much openness that one does not see in contemporary Chinese poetry. I added \u00bband out\u00ab after the first \u00bbout\u00ab to emphasize this yearning for this openness, but also to give the line a kind of strangeness that draws attention. This add-on literally adds an effect that might not be obvious in the original, but this emotive force of the poem demands a special treatment.\r\n\r\nThe last example is from an innovative use of an idiom from another contemporary Chinese poet Zang Di, which I, with the poet Lea Schneider, have translated into German. The idiom\r\n

\u72d7\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u8840\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u55b7 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u5934<\/p>\r\n

dog \u00a0 blood \u00a0 gush \u00a0\u00a0head<\/span><\/p>\r\nnormally means to overwhelm somebody with reproaches. With humor, Zang Di breaks this idiom and adds a turkey to the party:\r\n

\u72d7\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u7684\u00a0 \u00a0\u820c\u5934\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u4e0a \/ \u706b\u9e21\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u4e5f\u00a0 \u00a0 \u4f1a\u00a0 \u00a0 \u55b7\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u8840?<\/p>\r\n

dog\u00a0 \u2019s \u00a0 tongue \u00a0on\u00a0 turkey\u00a0 also\u00a0 can\u00a0 gush\u00a0 blood<\/span><\/p>\r\nWith no one-to-one counterpart in German, the closest we could find is another idiom jemandem etwas um die Ohren hauen<\/em>, literally in English, \u00bbto knock something around somebody\u2019s ears.\u00ab To add a bit of humor to this, Lea put \u00bba bag of rice\u00ab in German, einen Sack Reis in the mix for emphasis, thus we have einen Sack Reis schnell um die Ohren gehauen kriegt<\/em>; literally in English, \u00bbto quickly have a bag of rice knocked around the ears.\u00ab\r\n\r\nThe playful \u00bbturkey on a dog\u2019s tongue\u00ab turns into \u00bba bag of rice\u00ab with both meaning and humor preserved. Languages sometimes work out their own magic. If translated literally, it would not make sense, and worse still, the reader might be totally lost.\r\n\r\nAs a translator, if I conform entirely to the original text and to the interpretation of YAN Fu\u2019s first principle, XIN, as faithfulness, translation would be not only impossible but also a constant source of total despair. Ricoeur\u2019s meditation on translation as a kind of \u00bblinguistic hospitality\u00ab presumes the impossibility of the literal rendition between languages, and by accepting it as the basic condition of translation, opens up new room for translators to engage and even play with the text to the extent that meanings and feelings are imparted and thus become possible. It is time to read XIN not as trustworthy of what the text says, but rather, as authentic to what the original text truly conveys. In other words, it is time to shift the reading of XIN from faithfulness to authenticity."},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_footnotes","bgcolor":"","footnotes_list_hide_numbers":false,"footnotes":[{"footnote":"Paul Ricoeur: Sur la traduction<\/em>, Paris 2004."}]},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_txt","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"txt_cols":"is-1-txtcol","txt":"

Dong Li<\/strong> was born and raised in the People\u2019s Republic of China. He was educated at Deep Springs College and Brown University. He is a poet of the lost world. For his poems and literary projects, he has received fellowships from Akademie Schloss Solitude, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Camargo Foundation, Yaddo, and others. A recipient of the PEN\/Heim Translation Grant, Dong Li also translates from the Chinese, English, and German. His translated or co-translated collections have been published or are forthcoming with Deep Vellum\/Phoneme Media, Giramondo Publishing, Carl Hanser Verlag, East China Normal University Press, and Shanghai Translation Publishing House.<\/p>"}]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"project","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/project?post=31132"},{"taxonomy":"project_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/project_type?post=31132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}