All entries for January 2007

unspeakable

The fact that I
am writing to you
in English already falsifies what I
wanted to tell you.
My subject:
how to explain to you that I
don’t belong to English
though I belong nowhere else.
- Gustavo Perez Firmat

I wonder how many times things we do actually falsify things we intend to do. The talk of ethics…gosh…maybe I should not even think of talking about it!

Xiu Wang : 28 Jan 2007 01:13 |  Tags: Quote |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

the deadly acedemia?

Writing about web page http://shehui.voc.com.cn/article/00/1065295.html

Yesterday Ouyang jie committed suicide. She was a famous economic professor with Sun Yat-Sen University, the most famous university in South China.
I do not remember how many times I heard news like this. Some PhDs, or professors, or researchers, often from the best academic institutions, often recognized as well-established or very promising, often relatively young, often with a family, often reportedly talented, commit suicide. Does that much studying and reading and researching leads nowhere but a total desperation? Is the academia, the place that I am so eager to go for, only a deadly site after all?
I feel sad and sorry for those who passed away. But I cannot agree with the media, which has been almost unanimously commenting on the ‘weakness and fragility of intellectuals produced by the defected higher education system in China’. There are certainly problems within the higher education system, but there are bigger problems with how much space there is for us to feel free and dignified. I am sorry for this almost pathetic Englightenment blief in human nature, but this is truely my bottom line of still willing to live.
‘Man exists. For him it is not of question of wondering whether his presence in the world is useful, whether life is worth the trouble of being lived. The questions make so sense. It is a matter of knowing whether he wants to live and under what conditions’. (Beauvoir,Ethics of Ambiguity, 15) I can not agree with Beauvoir more. We live this life not to find out when we do not want to live, but rather to understand when we want it to continue.
Suicide, to me, is a most serious and solemn decision. It may have nothing to do with ‘weakness and fragility’, but rather is a final declaration of freedom and dignity of an individual.

Xiu Wang : 23 Jan 2007 01:42 |  Tags: Thoughts |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

we translate whatever you need

Writing about web page http://book.sina.com.cn/news/c/2006-11-09/1041206082.shtml

A collection of 26 Nobel Prize winning works was recently published in China. A most odd thing about this collection, which involves more than 10 different languages, is that it has only one translators’ name on the cover. Who can be such an omnipresent translator?
When accused of plagiarizing former translations, the publisher explains that this collection is translated by Lisi (the name on the cover) and his translation company in the past four years.
Is it possible for a translation company to have so many competant literary translator in house, and to work out this project within a few years time? (considering the fact that the first translated versions of some of these books took dacades to come out) The translation circle expressed its suspects.
The picture below appears in the local media, with a note saying “We translate whatever you need!”----a “true” professionalist claim.
The question here is “HOW”?

Xiu Wang : 19 Jan 2007 01:35 |  Tags: Translation |  Comments (7) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Last Verse written by Saddam Hussein

I suspect to what degree this verse is translatable at all. Leave alone the heavy political implications, leave alone the doomed untranslatable register, leave alone the remoteness of the original language, leave alone the field and habitus of the poet, leave alone the mystified background of its production, a glimpse of the title itself refuses interpretation: a Florid Farewell——what could that be?A bloodily colour of red? An elaborated and extravagant style of writing?

I first came across this verse from sina.com, a Chinese website. And here is an attempted back-translation into English.

Let go

Let go of your soul,
My beloved friends.
You are the dearest of my soul,
And no one shelters my heart like you.

Outsiders intruding our home,
on the face of those who yields, Tears will eventually flood
We face the wolves with bear chests,
We do not tremble in front of the beasts.

For you and your country,
The soul I devote
In this hard time, blood is nothing but cheap

Attacked,
We never knelt or bend for honour
But even for the enemies, due respect we do hold.

I compared it later with the English version release by the Times.
Unbind It

Unbind your soul. It is my soul mate and you are my soul¡¯s beloved.
No house could have sheltered my heart as you have.

The enemies forced strangers into our sea
And he who serves them will be made to weep.

Here we unveil our chests to the wolves
And will not tremble before the beast.

I sacrifice my soul for you and for our nation
Blood is cheap in hard times

We never kneel or bend when attacking
But we even treat our enemy with honor.

I suspect if the English translation was deliberately made without a rhyme, so that it reads less like a poem. After all, it is not a pleasant link between Hussein and a poet. Besides that, the Chinese version and the english version I’ve got are sort of alike. Maybe the Chinese one was translated from English rather than from the original after all.

Xiu Wang : 09 Jan 2007 01:29 |  Tags: Translation |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Still…

Winds get lost,
Not the kite
Clouds grow dim,
Not the sky

Flowers fade out,
Not the spring
I wake up,
Not the dream

Xiu Wang : 05 Jan 2007 16:27 |  Tags: Poetry |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

baby girl!

It has been almost a week now. I am still adjusting to the idea of 2007. The earthquake near Taiwan Straits seemed to have caused quite some disturbance with net connections, and it was until today that I started to be able to get back to some of my favourite websites.

It was a quite happy surprise to see from the blog of a professor that I really respected (and liked) that he just had a baby girl. She is sleeping with a sweet smile in that picture. Angel…Wish I can have mine in near future…

A wonderful news to start the New Year.

Xiu Wang : 05 Jan 2007 15:24 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem