1977 ended and the social environment gradually picked up. Cang is also eager to do something. However, political and social prejudice, old rules and habits still exist, and there are many thresholds. He doesn't know what to do: on the one hand, he doesn't want to waste time and can't stop; On the other hand, as a rightist with "historical problems", he can do whatever he wants, but he can't get in.
Just then, he learned from the newspaper that Ba Jin was translating herzen's long memoir "Past and Random Thoughts". When Cang was a graduate student in the 1950' s, he bought The Past and Random Thoughts published by the Soviet Literature and Art Publishing House. He wanted to learn some translation skills and methods of his predecessors, so he borrowed Family Drama (part of Volume V of Past Events and Random Thoughts) translated by Ba Lao in the 1950s from Peking University Library and studied it word by word.
In this process, although he realized some wonderful things in Ba Jin's translation, he also found some mistranslations and improper translations. However, with his gentle personality and long-term tortuous experience, he didn't have enough courage to give advice to Ba Jin, who is "as tall as a temple", especially worried that he would "go looking for trouble and ask for it". But his wife Hu Mingxia is a natural optimist and frank person. She encouraged Cang to give it a try. Touch a nail, nothing is lost, it's no big deal. Cang has just written a "sincere letter". Because I didn't know Ba Jin's address, the letter was sent to the editorial department of Wen Wei Po for forwarding.
1978 Shortly after the letter was sent in early March, he received a personal reply from Ba Jin. The letter wrote: "Comrade Zhong Lun: Thank you for your letter, and thank you for your opinion ..." He admitted that some translation errors were "translated according to the English version", while others were "made mistakes, which can't be blamed on the English translator", indicating that the retranslation must refer to Cang's opinion, and asked Cang to revise the new version of Past and Deep Thinking for him (the title was originally translated by Ba Jin).
Ba Jin personally opened the door to translation in Cang. From then on, in a shack of 14 square meters in the tube-shaped building of Peking University, he burned the midnight oil and began to work conscientiously and day and night. His advantage is that he can proofread the original Russian text, such as the book title былоеидумы, which was previously translated into Past and Memory, and Ba Lao changed it to Past and Meditation, Past and Meditation and Past and Meditation. Cang suggested that if it is in line with the author's original intention, it is more appropriate to translate it into "random thoughts", "random feelings" and "miscellaneous feelings". Therefore, Ba Jin named the book "Past and Random Thoughts" and said, "This is where I got my inspiration. I found a name for the main work" Random Thoughts "in my later years.
Like all scholars of the older generation, Cang is rigorous, standardized and meticulous in his work. He has a big notebook, which records his "works and translations" year after year. Its first page is 1979, which lists two items: 1, herzen: Past and Random Thoughts (School), translated by Ba Jin and translated by Shanghai Translation Publishing House. 2. Tolstoy: Father Cerchi (translated), Sichuan People's Publishing House. 1980 is also two events. Since then, with the passage of time, more and more achievements have been made, mostly proofreading or co-translation, followed by translation, papers and lectures.
Translation seems extremely simple. Say what others have said in another language. In fact, it is a difficult re-creation and an art. Cang devoted himself to translating Dostoevsky's works, during which he had the opportunity to visit Moscow University at 1992. Taking this opportunity, he traveled all over the streets of Moscow and Petersburg, looking for the apartments where the main characters in Crime and Punishment lived one by one. The carpenter's alley, hay market, ordinary citizen street and yekaterina Canal mentioned in the book are fascinating, which makes people feel cordial when translated.
In the past 30 years, Cang has not only become a translation expert of Dostoevsky, but also translated Pushkin, Nikolai Nikolai Gogol, herzen and Lev? Tolstoy, Asia? Ostrovsky, Turgenev, Gorky and many other classic writers. His translated and published Russian classics include Postman, Imperial Envoy, Past and Random Thoughts (co-translated), Crime and Punishment, Idiot, Devil, brothers karamazov, Insulted and Injured Man, Notes on Dead House, Dual Personality? Basement notes, Ivan? Ilych's Death, kleiser Sonata, After the Dance, Blizzard, Family Accounting, Thunderstorm, Cerca, etc. , there are nearly10 million words. The other two or three million words of translation, for various reasons, are still manuscripts, or have been lying in the publishing house for more than ten years. In 2007, he was awarded the honorary title of "Advanced Translator" by translators association of china.
While engaged in translation creation, Cang made a thorough and systematic thinking on the related issues of literary translation, and published a monograph "Translation History of China". He is the first scholar who advocates and devotes himself to the study of translation theory after the new period. It has trained dozens of doctoral students and master students in the fields of "literary translation" and "translation theory and practice" for Russian majors in Peking University, and laid the foundation for the construction of translation theory discipline for Russian language and literature majors in Peking University.
In addition, he has reviewed his translations for seven famous translators, including Liu Tie, Past and Random Thoughts (Volumes I and II), Crime and Punishment, Idiot, and I wonder how many blossoms were broken on the Riverside and Tolstoy's Short Stories, totaling about 20. However, proofreading is sometimes ignored, and even if it is signed, it is still not taken seriously. I made a random survey in colleges and universities, not to mention ordinary college students and graduate students. Even many liberal arts scholars may not pay attention to the translators of foreign literary works, and almost no one who is not a translation major has paid attention to proofreaders. In other words, a relative part of Cang's works is really "unknown". If it weren't for the radiation influenced by the past and other distractions, a considerable part of his works didn't get the recognition and attention they deserved.
Dostoevsky and Past and Random Thoughts are undoubtedly the two peaks of Cang's works, especially the latter. He continued to translate after the first and second volumes translated and published by Ba Lao, and the whole book was translated and published in April 2009. There are more than one million words in the upper and lower volumes * * *, which is the second version directly translated from Russian to the Russian version of Nine Volumes of herzen published by the People's Literature Publishing House 1993. This is the result of his efforts for several years.
Cang summed himself up and said that there were three "unexpected" moments in his 30-year life. First, 1948, he yearned for the revolution because he read Family Spring and Autumn Annals and joined the Youth League. Unexpectedly, 30 years later, he revised the translation with Ba Jin. Second, because Mu entered the Russian Department of Peking University and graduated from 1957, I didn't expect to be able to review his translation masterpiece Liu Tie for Mr. Cao who just passed away 30 years later. Thirdly, 1979, one or two volumes of Past and Random Thoughts translated by Ba Jin were published in Shanghai Translation Publishing House. Unexpectedly, 30 years later, he published the complete works of this book. With these three points, his life is also legendary.