人才库——翻译，就找翻译“国家队”

著名翻译家李文俊，1930年生，祖籍广东中山，出生在上海，中学毕业后考入复旦大学。1952年毕业于复旦大学新闻系。他历任《译文》及《世界文学》助理编辑、编辑、主编、副编审，编审。中国译协副会长，中国作家协会对外文化交流委员会委员，中国社科院外国文学研究所学术委员、2012年起为社科院荣誉学部委员。1979年加入中国作家协会。李文俊以翻译美国南方作家威廉·福克纳的作品闻名。

Li Wenjun, a renowned translator, was born in Shanghai in 1930. His family originated from Zhongshan, Guangdong. After graduating from high school, he was admitted into the Department of Journalism of Fudan University and graduated in 1952. Later, he has worked as associate editor, editor, editor-in-chief, associate professor of editorship and professor of editorship in Rendition andWorld Literature, vice chairman of the Translators Association of China (TAC), a member of the international culture committee of China Writers Association (CWA),and a committee member of the Institute of Foreign Literature at Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS). He became an honorable member of the CASS in 2012 and joined the CWA in 1979. Li Wenjun is famous for his translation of William Faulkner, an American writer that hailed from Dixie.

2017年2月10日，87岁高龄的李文俊先生在自己家中简述了自己的创作和生活经历。

On February 10, 2017, at his residence, the 87-year-old Mr. Li talks about his career as a writer/translator and personal life. 

著名翻译家李文俊从事外语相关工作部分缘于偶然因素。在上海复旦大学读书时，李文俊觉得自己的新闻专业缺少乐趣，就自己去“蹭听”外文系的课。“本科学分够了以后，我们就可以自选几门外文系的课。”李文俊的父亲是知识分子，当时在上海怡和洋行工作，收入还算高；母亲是家庭妇女，但也有文化。“从小我的零花钱就很多，他们就希望我把书读好”。在复旦时，李文俊和志趣相投的同学合作翻译，在52、53年左右，他们开始向出版社投稿，并蒙出版。

The renowned translator Li Wenjun took on foreign languages as a career partly by chance. At Fudan University, Li thought that journalism was no fun, so he decided to “deadhead” at the department of foreign languages. “As long as you’ve gained enough credits for your bachelor degree, you’re free to do some foreign languages courses of your preference.” Li’s father was an intellectual and used to work at Jardine Matheson, Shanghai, where he gained a pretty good income. His mother was a housewife but also well educated. “I had quite some allowance. They just wished that nothing would interfere with my performance at school.” At Fudan Li worked with other interested students in translating, but it was not until around 1952-53 that they started to submit their work to publishing houses and became published translators.

大学毕业后，李文俊从上海来到了北京，先后在《人民文学》、《译文》（后更名为《世界文学》）这些文学类期刊社工作过。经历了政治运动，安定下来已经七八十年代了。那时他开始着手翻译美国作家威廉·福克纳（William Faulkner）的作品。

After graduating from college, Li moved from Shanghai to Beijing and worked at literature journals including People’s Literature, Rendition (later known as World Literature). After thepolitical movement finally settled around 1970-80s, he dived in the translation of works by American writer William Faulkner. 

“当时比较用功，都是在工作之余做自己的翻译、写作的工作。也写了论文和散文，大多也是关于福克纳与美国南方文学的，”李文俊解释称，由于工作性质，当时翻译不算工作量，自己只能在下班后，利用工余时间完成译作。

“I worked pretty hard back then. I had a day job, and I translated and wrote. I wrote papers and essays, mostly on Faulkner and the Dixie literature,” explained Li. Translation did not fall into his job description or chip in on his pay check, so he had to do it in his sparetime after work. 

李文俊在《世界文学》杂志社也做了4-5年主编。他说自己63岁退休后才真正开始有时间翻译。“退休之后在家也认真工作了好几年。没有别的任务了，所以做了很多美国文学史的收尾工作。做什么不需要领导批准了。”

Li was the editor-in-chief of World Literature for four, five years. He said it was not until he was 63 years old and retired that he actually got time for translation. “I retired, but I retired to work at home, and pretty serious at that, for years. I had no other assignment anymore, so I rounded up a lot on American literature. And this time, I didn’t need any approval from my superior.” 

李文俊开始翻译福克纳的作品，起先是因为这是社科院的一个项目。福克纳的年代，美国南方相对落后。福克纳描绘了当地的小镇和农民生活的面貌，更贴近当时中国的社会。他个人也觉得，比起翻译古典作品，比如莎士比亚和其他英国文学，翻译现代美国文学“更加对路”，所以从此一直从事美国文学方面的工作。“除了福克纳以外，别的美国、英国作家的也做了一些，”他说。

Li first started on Faulkner because it had been a CASS project. In Faulkner’s times, the southern states were rather underdeveloped. Faulkner depicted a scene of the local townships and farmers as how they were, which was quite similar to what the Chinese society looked like back then. Li feels that translating modern American literature was “right up his street,” not the classics such as Shakespeare and other English writers. As a result, he’s been working on American literature ever since. “Besides Faulkner, I’ve done some other American authors too, and some English ones,” says Li. 

李文俊认为，福克纳笔下的人物有一部分是黑人；他写了黑人问题。福克纳还成功塑造了自己的小世界“约克纳帕塔法世系”（Yoknapatawpha Saga）。“里面的地名人名，这部小说里面有，另一部小说里面也有。后来中国和其他国家的作家受到启发，也开始写自己家乡的事情，再把它们都串起来，也是创造了自己的世界，”李文俊说。他认为福克纳在中国有影响，也正是体现在这个方面。

According to Li, a lot of Faulkner’s characters are blacks, and he wrote about the black issue. Faulkner also successfully created his own universe—the Yoknapatawpha Saga. “The same places and characters recur in more than one of his novels. Writers from China and other countries are inspired by this method, starting to write about their own hometown, mesh things together, and create their own universe,” says Li. In his opinion, that’s Faulkner’s legacy in China. 

和其他翻译名家一样，李文俊的家中随处可见的也是书。尽管年事已高，他对什么书放在家中什么位置了如指掌。他说退休之后，不时也有研究福克纳的年轻人上门或者发电子邮件来请教他，“有研究生做毕业论文的，也有拿我的译作做研究的”。李文俊说自己不会用电脑，网上的答复都是自己儿子代劳。

Just like other renowned translators, Li stacks his home with books. Though a senior now, he knows exactly where in his house he laid every single book. He says that after his retirement, youngsters who study Faulkner would come visit or email him with questions from time to time. “Some of them are master or doctor candidates who are working on their dissertation, some are studying my translation work,” observes Li. He can’t operate a computer, so his son does all the online replies. 

李文俊说自己年纪大了后，就选择相对轻松的题材，例如儿童文学。他说自己重译了简·奥斯汀（Jane Austen）的《爱玛》（Emma）、海明威（Ernest Hemingway）的《老人与海》（The Old Man and the Sea），还有《小熊维尼》（Winnie-the-Pooh）。

Li says, now that he’s older, he’d like to work on something lighter. Children’s books, for example. He retranslated Emma by Jane Austen, The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway, and Winnie-the-Pooh.

李文俊对“信达雅”的把握就是“原作者怎么写的，就要尽量贴近”。他说：“比如福克纳喜欢用长句，我翻译的时候也要用长句。我和杨绛他们有点不同，我更忠实原文的结构。”他解释称，这是因为杨绛他们中文好、胆子大，敢于把外文长句拆成短句，再用中文表达出来。但是自己“做不到，没这个本事”，所以就按照比较直的方法翻译，再尽量翻译得顺溜一点，让中国人可以看得懂。

Li says his take on the famous principles for translators—“faithfulness, expressiveness and taste”—is, “you should work your phrases as closely as possible to how the writer of the original text did.” He remarks, “for instance, Faulkner likes to use long sentences so that’s what I’d do too when translating. I don’t work the same way as Yang Jiang and their kind. I stay true to the structure of the original text.” He further explains the point, saying that Yang Jiang and the others do what they do because they are better at the Chinese language and bolder at it. Consequently, they are not afraid to break down the long lines into short fractions and rephrase them in Chinese. But he doesn’t “have what it takes so it’s a no-can-do.” His translating is more literal, while trying to smooth out his words as much as possible for the Chinese audience to understand.

尽管李文俊的工作生活以翻译为主，但也喜欢写写关于日常生活的小文章。陆陆续续写了好多，出版成4-5个文集。他谦虚地说自己只是做翻译工作的，“肚子里没什么东西，不像思想家，想法很多”。

Though Li’s professional life revolves around translating, occasionally he likes to write essays on his personal life, and is pretty productive on that front. By far, he’s published about four to five collections of essays. He says modestly that he is but a translator. “I don’t have much story to tell, unlike the thinkers who think a lot.” 

李文俊寄语年轻译者，鼓励他们要多看前辈翻译家的作品，同时要大胆尝试。不要觉得前辈翻过了，就不敢重译。当年他为了学习翻译，就读了傅雷、巴金还有鲁迅的许多译作。“郭沫若译过《浮士德》，鲁迅译过《死魂灵》，这些我们原来都不敢碰，都是名家译的，出版社也不会出你的，但现在一点点都放开了，反正也没有版权问题。”

On tips for young translators, Li encourages everyone to read more by their translating predecessors and to be bold in trying. You can still translate a book even if someone else has done it. When he was studying to be a translator, he read abundantly the translation works by Fu Lei, Ba Jin and Lu Xun. “Guo Moruo translated Faust, and Lu Xun Dead Souls, both of which we dared not to touch. Guo and Lu were such gurus, why would any publisher go with your version instead? But now things are not so tense anymore, and there’s no issue on the copyrights.” 

自己所有译作里面，李文俊最满意的是《喧哗与骚动》》（The Sound and the Fury）。福克纳其他的长篇小说《去吧，摩西》（Go Down, Moses）、《我弥留之际》（As I Lay Dying）自己也很喜欢。不过《押沙龙，押沙龙!》（Absalom, Absalom!）太难译，译作别人也不容易欣赏。

Among all of his translation works, The Sound and Fury (translated title: 喧哗与骚动) is his favorite brainchild. His other preferred works include Go Down, Moses (去吧，摩西) and As I Lay Dying (我弥留之际), both are Faulkner novels. However, Absalom, Absalom! (押沙龙，押沙龙！) is a tricky one, and the translated version is not so widely appreciated because of that.

退休以后，李文俊就爱上古玩，“一点一点把古玩市场的东西往家里搬，也不在乎真假。”他比较喜欢瓷器，因为漂亮，“青铜器你不可能买到真的，我看到过一个，几千块，我一看肯定是假的。”

After retirement, Li fell in love with the antiques. “Piece by piece, I moved things from the antique market to my house. I don’t even care if they are authentic or not.” He likes the china antiques for they are better looking. “Bronze ware, not so much. You’d never get anything authentic anyway. I came across this bronze antique that costs a couplethousand yuan and I could tell it’s a fake just by looking at it.” 

李文俊说图中左侧这件南北朝青瓷艺术品“一定是真的”，因为“造型复杂，造假也不容易。”他说二十多年前，这些古玩还算便宜，在北京潘家园市场也多少能淘到不少真东西。

The bronze piece from the Northern and Southern Dynasties (420-589) in the photo on the left, according to Li, “must be authentic” because “its shape is too complex for people to fake.” Li recalls two decades ago when the antiques were at a better price, and you could easily find some authentic objects in the Panjiayuan Market in Beijing.

李文俊喜爱古典音乐，自己的书房里有好多CD，但他说最近也都没有闲心静下来听。“一天过得很快，上午起来收拾完也就9点多了，下午就去附近超市菜场，晚上看看电视。”

Li loves classical music. He has a huge collection of CDs which he had no time or heart to listen to recently. “A day flies right by. You get up in the morning, you get washed, and it’s nine o’clock. I’d go to the farmer’s market or supermarket that’s nearby in the afternoon and watch some TV at night.” 

李文俊的妻子张佩芬是德语翻译家。李文俊说，起先他们夫妇还会互相切磋翻译，“她翻译完成了，我帮她看看，她参照我的意思再修改修改，但后来也不给我看了。我的东西她也不大看。”现在夫妇俩都年岁已高，不再从事翻译工作了。

Zhang Peifen, Mr. Li’s wife, is a translator of German language. Li says that at first they would compare notes in translating. “When she’s done with her work, I’d read it a little bit and she’d edit it according to my notes. But that doesn’t happen anymore. She won’t read what I do either.” As the two got older, they both retired from the translation work.

张佩芬说，“老李的脾气挺好。结婚几十年，没有过磕磕绊绊。”一般都是自己做饭，李文俊去买菜。李文俊说自己爱人原先的家庭条件比较好，没怎么学会做饭，所以“做得不好吃”。夫妇膝下有一子，是建筑师。“当时让他走外语或者外国文学这条路，怎么说都不听。我们想，他要是走这条路，我们还能辅导辅导，”张佩芬说。

Zhang says, “My husband is a nice guy. We’ve been married for decades and never had one fight.” Normally, he does the groceries and she cooks. Li says that since his wife comes from a privileged family and didn’t spend much time learning to cook, her food “is not very good.” The couple has a son who’s an architect. “We wanted him to do something in foreign languages or foreign literature, but he wouldn’t take a word from us. We just thought that if he did, we’d be able to help,” says Zhang.

李文俊说，现在也有人重新翻译福克纳的作品，比如《喧哗与骚动》，但那些译本自己都没有看过，也不在乎了。“他们在序言中说‘想要超过李文俊也比较难’。随便他们说吧，但我的作品迟早要淘汰的，年轻人可以踏过我们脚印继续往前走。”

Li is aware that people are retranslating Faulkner now, including The Sound and the Fury, but he didn’t read any of those works, nor does he care. “They even wrote in the preface that ‘it would be quite hard to surpass Li Wenjun.’ Oh well. But my works are to be weeded out sooner or later. The young translators could just step over our old footprints and move forward.”