The "Witty Words and Elegant Books" series lectures on world literature and cross-culture was held at 18: 30 on May 5, 2016 in X1405 of Xipu Campus. The theme was " Taking ‘Fresh Fields’ as an example to compare Chinese and Western translation practices". Ren Xiankai, teacher of the Department of International Chinese at the School of Foreign Languages of SWJTU, gave a keynote speech.

Mr. Ren first raised his concern about various translation of Chinese and Western literature. Meanwhile, he shared several of his translation works and described some of his own translation practices, including his current national social science project: Research on Foreign Literature Going Global. Then, Mr. Ren pointed out the technical problems in the process of translation and took "Fresh Fields" as an example to analyze the comparison between Chinese and western translation practices from the aspects of vocabulary and paragraphs.

At the lexical level, Ren specified it into name, place, bool title, terminology, Latin and medieval English, phrases and idioms and familiar words with unfamiliar meaning. Then he displayed the problems in the translation process respectively. In the module of names, Mr. Ren explained the system of Chinese and Western translation of standard sounds, taking historical celebrities such as Zhang Ailing as examples to illustrate that Chinese names tend to be vague in English translation. In the module of book title, Mr. Ren also mentioned the translation of the Bible and pointed out that such classic works have had different Chinese names, which makes the audience deeply aware that translation needs to take full account of the historical period and background and make clear that the translated name is determined by the development of history itself.In the following modules of phrases, idioms and familiar words with unfamiliar meaning, Mr. Ren highlighted the arduous creation process of the first Chinese translation of Les Miserables. Translators need to paid more than 100 times of efforts only on lexical level to perfect the classic translation.Then Mr Ren put forward his opinion on paragraph. He said that translation is not simply a word-for-word translation, but also a beautification of the text. This requires the translator to value paragraphs in the text, to divide the paragraphs properly, to plan the layout of the text, and to polish the translated works as works of art.

There are many problems in the translation of Chinese and Western literature, such as improper understanding of cultural background, lack of correspondence between proper nouns, and loss of plot or language elements.Mr. Ren pointed out that there are many reasons for these problems, including translator's attitude and ability, the actual situation of the text, the restriction of the editorial policy of publishing organizations and publications, and the social interests, preferences and prejudices caused by the background of the times.He said that in the era of machine translation and CAT, we should cherish the opportunities of discussing literature and culture. But he still believed that artificial intelligence can not completely replace artificial translation. For this reason, he also raised expectations in the final stage of the lecture, hoping that translators could devote more time and energy and do the translation work patiently and carefully.

After Mr. Ren's presentation, students raised questions and had hot discussions with him. Finally, the lecture ended successfully in warm applause.

Article: Chen Siqi

Photo:Gao Shangshi

Editor: Lu Xiaofei