Introduction
Notes Introduction 1. It is not a history of the translation process, which I have tried to address in detail elsewhere. See Mark Gamsa, The Chinese Translation of Russian Literature: Three Studies (Leiden: Brill, 2008). 2. See chap. 9 in Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). Here and below, the spellings Peking and Nanking will be used in historical reference to Beijing and Nanjing before the foundation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). 3. Cf. Song Binghui, “Ruoxiao minzu wenxue de yijie yu Zhongguo wenxue de xiandaixing” (The Translation and Introduction of Literature by Weak and Small Nations and Chinese Literary Modernity), collected in idem, Fangfa yu shijian: Zhong-wai wenxue guanxi yanjiu (Shanghai: Fudan daxue chuban- she, 2004), at p. 118. The translator of Shakespeare, Liang Shiqiu (1902–87), recalled with approval an explanation once given by the literary reformer and May Fourth leader Hu Shi (1891–1962): Liang remembered Hu Shi saying that those Chinese who knew English did not translate English literature (but, rather, used English as an intermediary to retranslate French and Russian works) because the language of original English fiction was so much more difficult than that of translations. Liang Shiqiu, “Fanyi” (Translation, 1928), quoted in Ping Baoxing, Wusi yitan yu Eluosi wenxue (Xining: Qinghai renmin chubanshe, 2004), p. 134. 4. While the cultural dimension to Russian-Chinese relations remains neglected, contacts and/or similarities between the two literatures have been discussed in sinological research, albeit without recourse to Russian-language material.
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