Chapter 351

Wei Ming relied on two English fairy tales to break through in the overseas world, so he naturally understood the importance of a good English translation to literary works.

In his past life, *The Three-Body Problem* could be famous overseas, which was inseparable from Liu Cixin's translation.

A work usually has two situations for translation, such as a translator whose mother tongue is Chinese like *The Three-Body Problem*.

And there is also an author whose mother tongue is the target language like *The Lion King*'s Melinda.

Both situations have their own advantages and focuses.

A translator whose mother tongue is Chinese can better understand the linguistic subtlety, cultural connotation, historical and social background, author style, and intention of the original work, and can better grasp the essence of the original text.

But the translation might be slightly inferior in the expression habits, sense of language, rhetoric, and contemporaneity of the target language. Sometimes it will appear to have a "translation tone," not natural and fluent enough, and might not be as flexible as a translator whose mother tongue is the target language.

Its translation sometimes might face a higher acceptance threshold in the target language market, affecting sales.

And a translator whose mother tongue is the target language has a more precise grasp of the sense of language, habitual usage, cultural background, and contemporary phonetic evolution of the target language, and can ensure that the translation reads fluently and naturally, conforms to the reading habits of target language readers, and is conducive to the overseas market promotion and dissemination of the work.

Of course, because of cultural barriers, there might be some misunderstandings and simplifications of the original work, and it cannot push the original work to overseas in an authentic way.

The most ideal model should be a collaboration between a foreign translator who is proficient in Chinese and a Chinese translator who is proficient in the target language.

Or it is translated by a Chinese-American bilingual who has rich life experience in both countries. Liu Cixin actually belongs to this kind.

And the translation golden combination proposed by Old Xia, Yang Xianyi and Dai Naidie, is such a combination.

Mr. Yang Xianyi is Chinese and graduated from Oxford University in the UK. His wife, Dai Naidie, is British. She met Yang Xianyi while studying at Oxford University and followed him back to China to settle down and live.

Since the end of the 19th century, in contrast to the prosperous landscape of translation from foreign languages to Chinese, translation from Chinese to foreign languages has always appeared thin and weak.

Under the suggestion of Mr. Liang Shiqiu, the couple specialized in the work of translating Chinese classics into English.

Just look at their works to know their level.

*The Travels of Lao Can*, *Li Sao*, *The Palace of Eternal Life*, *The Scholars*, *Selected Plays of Guan Hanqing*, *Selected Stories of Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio*, the opera *The White-Haired Girl*, the play *Qu Yuan*, and multiple Lu Xun works including *A Brief History of Chinese Fiction*, *Call to Arms*, *Wandering*, *Old Stories Retold*, and *Wild Grass*.

Oh, the English translation of *Dream of the Red Chamber* that the couple completed over several years recently was also officially published.

This can be said to be one of the two most classic and influential English translations of *Dream of the Red Chamber*, and it is also the world's first complete English translation of *Dream of the Red Chamber*.

It can be said that the works translated by the couple, besides Chinese ancient classics, only include Lu Xun's works in modern times.

Being able to move these two to translate Wei Ming's *In the Name of the People*, Wei Ming believed that if it weren't for the things he did before, having such high prestige at home and abroad, the Foreign Language Publishing House definitely wouldn't be so attentive and invited these two out.

At their age, I'm afraid they would have to retire after translating this big volume.

Wei Ming expressed his gratitude to Old Xia. He still had work to be busy with, and the secretary took Wei Ming out to meet Liu Gao, the Deputy Director of the Copyright Bureau who was leading the team this time.

He was 50 years old this year, in the prime of life, and later directly participated in the establishment of China's copyright law system and the process of China joining the World Copyright Convention.

Deputy Director Liu shook hands with Wei Ming. Learning that Wei Ming was invited by Macmillan Publishers to go to Frankfurt, he was very emotional.

"Actually, this way of inviting writers to go abroad in person to explain their works is very necessary. I have participated in the Frankfurt Book Fair several times before. Many foreign writers go in person and are highly sought after, it's just that the cost of going abroad is too high, and we can't afford it."

Like Wei Ming, the cost of his trip abroad this time was paid by himself, and then reimbursed by Macmillan Publishers.

"Then how many people are there this time?" Wei Ming asked.

"Including you, it's eight people," Deputy Director Wang said, "One from the Copyright Bureau, one from the Book Trading Company, two from the Foreign Language Bureau, and the rest are representatives of several large publishing houses. We have to go to Hong Kong first, where there are two comrades from Joint Publishing and International Bookstore, totaling ten people."

Wei Ming corrected: "11, my sister is also going, she also has a book published abroad."

Deputy Director Wang: "Ah!?"

A scale of 11 people really wasn't large. Abroad, each publishing house acted on its own. A small country might have multiple publishing houses attending, and one publishing house had several people.

Compared with China's population and the number of books, ten people were obviously not enough, and very important writers were absent.

He hoped that his trip this time could sell more copyrights, which might promote the Ministry of Culture to take more writers out next year.

Deputy Director Wang also had high hopes for Wei Ming. He heard that he had dated a British girlfriend, spoke good English, saved the trouble of translation, could directly introduce his works to foreign publishers, and key point: he had a successful experience of works going overseas and had quite high popularity abroad.

However, Wei Ming was also really unsure whether his serious literary novels could successfully go overseas.

Melinda was at Macmillan. Macmillan couldn't be unaware that there were several serious literary works with extremely high popularity in China, but they had never shown any interest in these works.

Next, Wei Ming ran to the Foreign Language Publishing House of the Foreign Language Bureau again, wanting to visit Yang Xianyi and Dai Naidie. They would cooperate next, so they would often have to contact each other.

Arriving at the Foreign Language Publishing House, Wei Ming first found Mr. Ye Junjian. The *Andersen's Fairy Tales* Wei Ming read was translated by him, and the two had met at some activities of the Writers Association.

Old Ye was not only a famous novelist and translator in our country but also a propagandist who had long been engaged in foreign propaganda work, and also served as the director of the China-Foreign Literature Exchange Committee.

*Chinese Literature*, the only national-level large-scale foreign literature publication founded after the founding of New China that faced Western readers and translated and introduced Chinese classical literature and modern and contemporary literary works, was founded by his preparation.

He was the anchor of the Foreign Language Publishing House, and he was one of the two spots for going abroad from the Foreign Language Bureau this time.

And Old Ye also participated in the English translation work of the Great Man's poems, and together with Qian Zhongshu and British experts, completed the translation of 37 poems over ten years, including that sentence "The right path in the world is the vicissitudes of life" in the Great Man's poems, which was also translated by him.

It was just that the English translation was too long, and it wasn't suitable as the English book title for *In the Name of the People*. The old man took Wei Ming to find the Yang Xianyi couple and was still discussing the English translation of this book.

Then arriving at the Yang family, Wei Ming didn't even have time to exchange pleasantries with the two translation masters, and watched helplessly as two Chinese old men and one British old lady started a heated discussion on the book title problem.

They were Chinese for a while and English for a while, the speaking speed was quite fast, and they often abruptly shifted from one problem to another.

Although Wei Ming could interject, he couldn't keep up with their rhythm. Seeing ingredients in the kitchen, he simply cooked a lunch for them.

Until the meal started, the two hosts realized they had neglected Wei Ming, this guest, and hurriedly apologized.

Wei Ming indicated: "Everyone is for the translation of my novel, I'm too happy to be happy. I don't understand translation work. If you have any doubts about the content of the novel, please find me as soon as possible. I'll leave my phone number and home address for you two in a while."

"Then Little Wei, do you have any creative notes?" Mr. Yang Xianyi asked.

"Yes, several notebooks. I'll send them to you tomorrow."

"Good, good, good."

Next, Dai Naidie affirmed Wei Ming's cooking skills. For the British, this was a delicacy!

After the meal, when Old Ye accompanied Wei Ming downstairs, Wei Ming still asked: "I see that the health of the two gentlemen seems not very good. Will this scale of translation work be unfriendly to them?"

Old Ye was of similar age to Old Yang, and Dai Naidie was younger, but the state of this couple didn't look as good as Old Ye's.

Ye Junjian sighed: "It's not that their health is bad, it's that their spirit is bad. Two years ago, their son committed suicide."

"Ah!?"

Then Old Ye talked about the absurd things that happened in that absurd era.

Just because Dai Naidie was British, this couple was labeled as "spies," both were imprisoned, and one son and two daughters who had no one to take care of them also suffered. Especially the son, who eventually suffered from schizophrenia after ten years of torture, that is, he went crazy.