Abstract: In 1998, fifty-four years after Zhu Shenghao's death at the age of thirty-two, Li Funing, well-known literary critic and translator, began his introduction to the eight volumes of the Complete Works of Shakespeare with the following remarks: 译林出版社筹划出版一套增订本《莎士比亚全集》,前后共用 了近五年时间。这套全集仍以朱生豪先生译本为基础,这是恰 当的,因为朱译本最受读者欢迎… … 朱先生的译文既能紧扣 原文,把原文的意思准确,充分地表达出来,又能再创造,保 持译文的通畅,自然。尤其它优美,灵动和风格化的语言更是 为人称道。1(The Yilin Press has spent five years preparing the publication of Complete Works of Shakespeare with additional materials. This publication is still based on Zhu Shenghao's translations, which is just as it should be, since his translations have been most popular among readers…. Faithful to the original, Mr. Zhu's translation does not only capture the spirit of the original and express its meaning accurately and fully but also recreates and preserves its natural flow. The elegance and vivacity of his stylistic language have especially been praised.) Why at the end of the last century did the largest publisher of foreign languages and literatures in China choose to publish Shakespeare texts translated by a young man more than half a century ago? From the first publication of Tian Han's translation of Hamlet in 1921, well-known playwrights, such as Tian Han and Cao Yu, poets, such as Bian Zhilin, Dai Wangshu, and Zheng Min, famous scholars with higher degrees from American and English elite universities, such as Liang Shiqiu, Cao Weifeng, and Liu Wuji, professional translators, such as Sun Dayu and Fang Ping, have all published different versions of Shakespeare. Among them, Liang Shiqiu is the only one who translated the complete works, which were published in 1968.2 In comparison with these numerous well-known scholars, poets, and playwrights, Zhu Shenghao had the least favorable conditions, financially, physically, in terms of time and historical circumstances. Why does his translation still stand out seven decades after his death?Despite Liang Shiqiu's achievement, many readers still prefer Zhu's translations, as the English-language expert Xu Guozhang has explained.3 Liang, one of the first Shakespeare translators, started preparing his translation in 1930, when Zhu was only eighteen, and finished the complete works in 1968, twenty-three years after Zhu's death. In other words, while Liang took thirty-eight years to finish his project, Zhu took less than ten years to complete a similar project.In 1930, Hu Shih, the director of the translation board of the Chinese Educational Funding Committee, recommended five well-known literary figures—Wen Yiduo, Xu Zhimou, Chen Xiying, Ye Gongchao, and Liang Shiqiu—to translate Shakespeare in an ambitious five-year project that was to be supported by a budget of fifty thousand silver dollars—a large quantity at that time. For different reasons, none of these writers, except Liang, ended up translating Shakespeare. Liang deemed the job as his responsibility—a burden he had to bear. As he wrote to his daughter Wenqiang, “一星期校对10本莎氏,可把我整惨了,几乎把我累死了!… … 译书之苦,不下于生孩子” (“I have to revise ten Shakespeare plays within one week; how miserable, I am almost dead of fatigue! … The pain caused by translation is no less than that of delivering a child”) and he even complained that “真恨莎土比亚为什么要写这么多” (“I truly hate Shakespeare; why did he write so much?”).4 An excellent scholar who possessed admirable determination and an iron will, Liang finished the translation, although his suffering in the process of translation cannot help being somewhat contagious to his readers. In short, his translations resulted more from his heightened sense of duty than from great passion, in contrast to the case of Zhu Shenghao.Instead of suffering, Shakespearean translation brought not only enjoyment but also meaning to Zhu Shenghao's life despite his poverty, sickness, and constant displacement during the Sino-Japanese war. In 1933, the twenty-one-year-old Zhu Shenghao graduated from Zhijiang University and started working at the World Bookstore in Shanghai. Zhu, a solitary and silent young man, initially felt bored, lonely, and depressed in his new urban environment. He expressed his feelings to Song Qingru, his former schoolmate and lifelong love: 做人是那样乏力的事,想我每天回来,就是要读书,也缺少了 精神兴致,心里又是这样那样乱得很,难得有安静的一天。纵 使生活比止水还寂寞,感到的只是莫名的疲倦,更恐惧着日子 将永不会变样。5(To live is so tiring. Imagine that every day after my work, I only want to read, but I don't have enough energy or interest. I feel so confused that I can hardly be at peace with myself—not even during a single day. Even though my life is quieter than dead water, I still feel tired without any plausible reason. What scares me the most is that this life remains forever unchanged.) Translating Shakespeare, however, brought much awaited change to his life. In the spring of 1935, impressed by his remarkable talent in both the Chinese and English languages, Zhan Wenhu, his senior colleague at the World Bookstore, encouraged Zhu to translate Shakespeare.6 After that, instead of wallowing in boredom, Zhu devoted all his free time to researching Shakespeare and translating his works. Once he finished half of his first translation, The Tempest, the life that he had compared to dead water not long before had been transformed into poetry. He became so cheerful that he had the impression that bedbugs had disappeared simply because he slept more soundly, and he even found local mosquitoes virtuous because of their unusual silence.7 Instead of complaining about solitude or boredom as he had done in the past, he tried his best to cheer Song Qingru, whom he now found to be much more solitary than himself. He had Shakespeare as a companion.8In 1942, one year after his marriage, a jobless and penniless Zhu Shenghao was living under his mother-in-law's roof, a living arrangement designed to allow him to concentrate on his translations of Shakespeare day and night. He was so poor that he refused to see a doctor for his badly infected teeth. At the same time, poverty didn't prevent him from enjoying his work. As he said to his wife, “我很贫穷,但我无所不有” (“I am very poor, but I have everything”).9 His wife watched him work ceaselessly at his desk and tried very hard to persuade him to visit the temples on top of the Yu Mountains for a break. But Zhu did not feel grateful to his well-intentioned wife, and he felt indifferent to the nature surrounding him. Once at home, he complained about wasting his day as a “vagabond.”10 One month before his death, he told Song Qingru: “早知一病不起,就是拼着命也得把它译 完” (“If I had known that I would never recover from this sickness, I would have exhausted every possibility in order to finish all translations”).11In comparison with Zhu Shenghao, Liang Shiqiu had an excellent background in English literature, more favorable material and research conditions as a renowned writer and scholar, and much more time at his disposal to complete his endeavor. Further, he was able to use Zhu's texts as a point of departure for his own translations, which were published twenty-four years after Zhu's premature death. Liang Shiqiu was a Shakespearian expert; he even claimed to have corrected mistakes in the original texts of the English playwright. He could not, however, point out any inaccuracy in Zhu's translations after having gone through them word by word, except for certain omissions of obscene language, which Liang found “regrettable.”12 Wasn't this the greatest indirect homage that Liang could ever pay to his much younger but much less fortunate predecessor?We should not forget that Zhu did his work during the Sino-Japanese war using copies of Shakespeare's plays bought from secondhand bookstores in Shanghai. In the last two years of his life, Zhu finished his best work—his translations of Shakespeare's tragedies—with only two dictionaries and without institutional support or financial reward.13 He had made so much progress during these two years that some of his readers, including me, mistakenly believed that Shakespeare was a much better writer of tragedies than comedies. In reality, however, Zhu's favorite Shakespeare plays were comedies and this is why Zhu chose to begin his translations with them.14 My misperception shows the extent to which the quality of Zhu's translations has influenced Shakespeare's reception in China. Through his translations, Zhu communicated his enjoyment to numerous readers, which is one of the reasons why seven decades after his death his works still remain most popular among Shakespeare's readers in China.Unlike most other Shakespeare translators in China, Zhu Shenghao had never had formal schooling in Western literature; he graduated with a degree in Chinese. Nevertheless, his commentaries on world literature are insightful, original, and fearless. Although contemporary editions of Shakespeare have continued to choose his translations, few have republished his preface and other commentaries on Shakespeare because they are so idiosyncratic and do not adhere to scholarly conventions. Zhu declared, “我一点学问也没有,学问是可以求得的,我的毛病是我看不起学问” (“I don't have any scholarly knowledge. I could have learned it; but my weakness is that I look down on scholarly knowledge”).15 On another occasion, he wrote: “研究文学这四个字很可笑,一切的文学理论也全是多事,我 以为能和文学发生关系的,只有两种人,一种是创作者,一种是欣 赏者,无所谓研究” (“The expression ‘literary studies’ is laughable. All the literary theories are also meaningless. I believe that only two kinds of people can relate to literature: authors and admirers; there is no room left for so-called literary studies”).16Despite his erudition in both Western and Chinese literature, Zhu Shenghao deliberately eschewed scholarly conventions. Since he did not respect scholarly authority, it is indeed difficult for scholars to take his commentaries seriously. To accept his commentaries implies a recognition of the subjective nature of scholarship, since Zhu lays bare the subjectivity of his literary criticism. Nevertheless, precisely because of their subjectivity, his criticism radically reveals what personally motivated him to translate Shakespeare.The preface to his translations of Shakespeare is a case in point: 于世界文学史中,足以笼罩一世,凌越千古,卓然为词坛之宗 匠,诗人之冠冕者,其为希腊之荷马,意大利之但丁,英之莎 士比亚,德之歌德乎… … 然以超脱时空限制一点而论,则莎士 比亚之成就,则远在三子之上。盖莎翁笔下之人物,虽多为古 代之贵族阶级,然彼所发掘者,则古今中外贵贱贫富人人同具 之人性。故虽经三百余年以后,不仅其书为全世界文学之士所 耽读,其剧本且在各国舞台与银幕上历久搬演而弗衰,盖由其 作品具有永久性与普遍性,故能深入人心如此耳。17(In the history of world literature, only four authors, Homer of ancient Greece, Dante of Italy, Shakespeare of England, and Goethe of Germany, have transcended temporal and spatial limits. They are great masters and crowned kings of the poetic world…. But in terms of transcending temporal and spatial limits, Shakespeare surpasses by far the other three. Although most characters created by Shakespeare belonged to an aristocracy of the past, what he tried to penetrate was the human nature shared by all, be they ancient or modern, Chinese or foreign, aristocrat or commoner, rich or poor. Thus, after three centuries, not only are his works read assiduously by admirers of literature but his plays also continue to attract large audiences on the stage and on the screen in different countries. Because his works are eternal and universal, they still touch people's hearts deeply.) Here we can find little trace of “scholarly knowledge.” Zhu instead spoke mostly from the perspective of an admirer of literature without making any reference to literary criticism. What he emphasizes in this passage are those qualities that make Shakespeare accessible to common readers and spectators, such as “超脱时空限制” (“transcending temporal and spatial limits”), “永久性与普遍性” (“eternality and universality”), “则古今中外贵贱贫富人人同具之人性” (“the human nature shared by all, be they ancient or modern, Chinese or foreign, aristocrat or commoner, rich or poor”). In other words, he translated Shakespeare's plays not only because of his status as a great master in world literature or his prestige among the cultural elite but also and more importantly because they deeply touched him as someone who was an uncommonly perceptive but common admirer of great literature as well as a spectator of theatrical performance.Zhu's emphasis on the universal appeal of Shakespeare suggests that he intended to make Shakespeare's plays a part of global “popular culture” through his translations. He intended to reach as many Chinese people as possible not only through texts but also through stage performances. Today we may find his claims about the eternity and universality of great literature to be slightly problematic—especially in a postcolonial context. Nevertheless, the author of this preface sacrificed everything in his life to realize this humanistic vision of world literature while remaining lucidly critical even of some of Shakespeare's works.18 Because of his efforts, Shakespeare has indeed reached a significant number of Chinese readers over the course of the nearly seventy years since his translations were first published.On 18 September 1931, the Japanese invaded Manchuria, after which China was under the shadow of the Sino-Japanese war. In the spring of 1935, Zhu Shenghao learned from his brother Zhu Wenzhen that a Japanese writer had claimed that “中国是无文化的国家,连老莎的译本都没有” (“China is a country without culture; it doesn't even have Shakespeare translations”).19 Humiliated by the statement of a citizen of the country invading China and motivated by the desire to fill this gap, Zhu became more determined than ever to translate Shakespeare.Can we consider Zhu a patriot because of his determination under these circumstances? Song Qingru, his lifelong companion, did not think so. She erased the reference to his “爱国主义” (“patriotism”) from Wu Jiemin and Zhu Hongda's biography of Zhu and replaced it with “爱国思想” (“patriotic thinking”).20 Song was no doubt the person who understood her husband the best. Her change did not necessarily mean she was being modest on Zhu's behalf, although that's how it may appear to most of us. Rather, she might have been suggesting something much less conventional. As a thinker, Zhu Shenghao was too original and too idiosyncratic to admit of confining his thinking within the frame of any “ism.”He wrote to Song Qingru about love for one's country in a 1936 letter: 国民对于国爱不爱全可以随便,不能勉强的,但因为个人是整 个国家的一分子,因此必然他对于他的国家有一种义务,一个 好国民即是能尽这种义务的人,而不一定要爱国。因为情感会 去使人们盲目,如果他的国家是一个强国,那么他会变成一个 自私的帝国主义者,以征服者自命;假如他的国家是一个落后 的国家,那么他会妄自尊大,抬出一文钱不值的 “国粹”来自吹 自捧,而压抑了进步势力的抬头。如果人人知道他的国家的不 可爱,而努力使她变得可爱起来,那么这个国家才有希望。21(A citizen can choose whether he loves or doesn't love his country, nobody can force him. But as a member, he needs to perform his duty to his nation. A good citizen is the one who fulfills this duty, but he doesn't necessarily need to love the country. Love as an emotion makes people blind: if his motherland is strong, he will become a selfish imperialist, considering himself a conqueror; if his motherland is weak, he will boast about some worthless “national essence” with pride and vanity, thus repressing any progressive trend. By contrast, if everyone knows his country is not loveable and tries his best to make her loved, only then will there be hope for this country.) In other words, for Zhu Shenghao, love for his country—as everyone claimed to feel in wartime China—was at most a neutral sentiment. Indeed, it often had negative consequences if it became an ideological obligation. In this sense, Song Qingru was right to challenge the reference to his patriotism in the biography. At the same time, Zhu was influenced by the May Fourth New Culture movement, which combined nationalism with radical criticism of traditional Chinese culture. Like most May Fourth intellectuals, Zhu was of two minds about modernization; his ambivalence stemmed from the humiliation China experienced facing Japanese modernity in the form of military and economic power. For Chinese intellectuals, Japan represented the West. But unlike most May Fourth thinkers, instead of confining his thinking to the rigid framework of an “ism,” Zhu invented a different notion of patriotism: patriotism in action.According to him, the nation was not an abstract entity but was constituted concretely by its members. Thus, citizens should not be sentimental about their country; rather they should look at it critically, because only through a critical assessment of a country can citizens take effective action to improve it. In other words, for Zhu, good citizens show their commitment to the nation by concretely acting to improve the nation instead by trying to preserve the status quo through sentimental or empty words. This “patriotism in action” included creating a new culture, instead of clinging to a “一文钱不值的 ‘国粹’” (“worthless national essence”). Zhu's notion of patriotism as a concrete action thus displaced the notion of patriotism as a mostly verbal activity. The consequences of concrete action should be measurable in practical terms, just as in the case of his translation of Shakespeare, which should make his nation more “loved.”Introducing foreign literature was a part of the May Fourth agenda; it was seen as way to enhance national culture. That's part of the reason why 1935 was considered the year of translation, because translation, according to Lu Xun and many other May Fourth thinkers, could contribute to enriching and renewing Chinese culture. One other aspect that differentiated Zhu Shenghao from most of his contemporaries was that he never associated his actions with any political group. He chose to translate Shakespeare as his individual patriotic action, and he continued to translate Shakespeare's work for the rest of his life with little financial reward and without any communitarian or institutional support.Besides his translations, the only other writings Zhu left to us are a collection of love letters to Song Qingru and miscellaneous short articles published between 1939 and 1941 in a newspaper called the Chinese and American Daily (中美日报)—a surrogate of the official newspaper of the Nationalist Party in occupied Shanghai, under the guise of American ownership.To an extent, both the letters and the articles reveal contradictions in Shakespeare's translator. The letters are his sole writings addressing not only his personal life but also his professional aspirations as a poet and translator. Song, a talented poet of her own right and a modern woman who refused an arranged marriage and decided to use her dowry to pay for her university tuition, understood him well. As a result, Zhu Shenghao felt no hesitation in confessing to her his sadness, joy, frustration, satisfaction, ideas, and preferences. He had an ideal listener. Apparently, Zhu Shenghao was very quiet; Hu Shanyuan, his university professor who recommended him for the job at the World Bookstore, recalled that “在世界书局数年,他就坐在我对面,我没听见他说满十句话,别人与他谈话,大多以点头,摇头或微笑答之” (“during several years of his work at the World Bookstore, Zhu and I sat face-to-face. All these years I had never heard more than ten sentences from him. When others talked to him, he responded by nodding, shaking the head or smiling”).22 His love letters to Song Qingru, however, reveal an unusually passionate, witty, and brilliant personality.Part of his miscellaneous articles are published under the title of 《朱生豪小言集》(Zhu Shenghao's Small Words).23 These articles, which based on his readings of daily news in occupied Shanghai, were written as supplements to his editorials that appeared in the Chinese and American Daily. Despite his timidity, his criticism of Japanese invaders and German Nazis was fearless and incisive. Because he lived in Japanese-occupied Shanghai, it was dangerous to criticize the Japanese in public, even though the newspaper was relatively protected by its affiliation with the United States (it was located in the concession). After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese immediately confiscated the newspaper's office, with the result that for the second time during the war, Zhu Shenghao lost most of his translated plays. Despite his courageous criticism of the Japanese in occupied Shanghai, the puppet government of Wang Jingwei, and the German Nazis, Zhu still felt that he was forced to write “words against his consciousness” (“违心的话”), because of the ideological framework of the newspaper (reflecting the political stance of the Nationalist Party, the newspaper was publicly anti-Japanese but latently anti-Communist).24 In other words, Zhu didn't want to love his country with empty words; instead he had personal ethics that he followed—ethics much stricter than any verbal commitment.If he had to compromise in his miscellaneous articles written for the newspaper because of its ideological framework, Zhu adhered to his personal ethics and his notion of patriotism in action in his translations of Shakespeare much more strictly. Zhu was so poor when he lived in the Japanese-occupied territory that he could not even afford to buy oil for his lamp. Thus, he worked from early dawn until darkness in the evening without even the light of an oil lamp. Despite the poverty, he stated that he preferred to die than to get a job with the puppet government.25 After his marriage in 1941, he could also have gone to Hong Kong or to Chongqing to find a job with no connection to the Japanese power. But the couple decided to stay near Shanghai, first with his mother-in-law in Changshou and later in his hometown of Jiaxing so that he could finish his translations.26 In the spring of 1942, he gave up everything and confined himself to his desk; during the last three years of his life, he concentrated on his translations of Shakespeare.27 Idealistic and ethical, Zhu considered his translations as proof of his patriotism in action. “舍弟说我将成为一个民族英雄,如果把Shakespeare译成功以后” (“My brother said I will become a national hero if I succeed in translating Shakespeare”).28 Although Zhu had never been a soldier in the battlefield, his translations were the battlefield where he displayed his own “patriotism in action.”Like most of his contemporaries, Zhu believed Chinese culture needed to be “Westernized,” and he considered himself radically modern. He even claimed that “我有好多地方真完全不是中国人,我所嗜好的也全是外国的东 西… … 在思想上和传统的中国思想完全相反” (“in many respects, I am not at all a Chinese. Whatever attracts me is all foreign…. My thinking is totally opposite to Chinese tradition”).29Like many interesting characters in Shakespeare's works, his Chinese translator embodied contradictions. Despite his claim to being the opposite of Chinese tradition, Zhu excelled in writing traditional Chinese poetry, so much so that Xia Chengtao, his university professor who was considered “一代词学之宗” (“the father of a generation of Ci [a type of classic poetry] studies in modern China”), loved reading his student's classic poetry so much that he even forgot to eat (忘食).30 In 1931, Professor Xia praised the nineteen-year-old sophomore student: “朱生豪的才智,在古人中亦只 有苏东坡一人而已” (“Zhu Shenghao's talent can only be compared with that of a single poet in the past, Song Dongpo”).31 Many Chinese scholars consider Song Dongpo (1037–1101) to be one of the greatest geniuses among thousands of years of Chinese civilization, and his Ci poems are the summit of this form.The recognition of the young man's talent in Chinese department at Zhijiang University makes clear that Zhu as not only passionate for foreign literature. Two Chinese classic poets, Qu Yuan (339–278 BCE) and Tao Qian (365–427 BCE), were among his favorites. Qu Yuan was a politician of the Chu state during the Warring States period and is considered by Chinese historian to be a great patriotic poet. Qu Yuan committed suicide in the Miluo River to protest against the political corruption of the era. Tao Qian, a poet of the East Jin dynasty, excelled in describing idyllic and pastoral scenes. After the Japanese occupation of Shanghai on 13 August 1937, Zhu wrote a Ci poem to declare his preference for Qu Yuan over Tao Qian (“屈原是,陶潜非”), making a patriotic statement about China under a foreign power by embracing Qu's patriotism and rejecting Tao's escapism.32 Despite Zhu's denial of his connections with traditional Chinese culture, his talent in classic and modern Chinese poetry no doubt contributed to his successful transplantation of Shakespeare, his favorite English author, to China.Zhu Shenghao's name is so closely associated with Shakespeare in China that it is not an exaggeration to state that to a large extent the English playwright owes his Chinese popularity to his young translator. During a period that almost coincided with the Sino-Japanese War (1935–1944), Zhu translated thirty-one and a half of thirty-seven plays into Chinese, occasionally based on a secondhand copies purchased for fifteen cents each.33 Twice during the war, he even lost his translations, even though they were the first objects he reached for if he had any time to escape from the Japanese bombardment or inquisition. But he worked so hard on each play that he ended up memorizing his translations by heart. For example, the third version of The Tempest remains virtually identical to the first version, which had been done several years earlier and then was discovered in the World Bookstore after the war.34While most other Shakespeare translators had spent years in the West, Zhu never left southeast China. Many Chinese, including myself, love Shakespeare thanks to Zhu; his translations not only transmit the spirit of the originals but also make them accessible to ordinary Chinese readers owing to the unusual grace, clarity, vivacity, and accuracy of his language. Zhu has made Shakespeare a part of Chinese culture through his lively translations, which are loved not only by highly educated scholars but also by ordinary amateurs of literature, including children. At the age of twelve, I fell in love with Shakespeare's plays because of his translations; they were my friends during the Cultural Revolution, a difficult time of my life.Paradoxically, despite his generous gift to millions of Chinese readers like me, Zhu did not seem to think much about translation. In December 1936, he explains in a letter to Song Qingru that 实在要是我生下来的时候,上帝就对我说,“你是只好把别人现 成的东西拿来翻译翻译的”,那么我一定请求他把我的生命收回 去。其实直到我大学二年级为止,我根本不想干(或者屑于) 翻译。可是自到此来(按指世界书局)以后,每逢碰见熟人, 他们总是问:“你做什么事;是不是在翻译?”好像我唯一的本领 就只是翻译。对于他们,我的回答是:“不,做字典”。当然做字 典比起翻译来更是无聊的多,不过至少这可以让他们知道我不 只会翻译而已。35(in reality, if God told me at my birth: “All you can do in your life is to translate what others have already written,” I would certainly have asked him to take back my life. Actually, until I became a sophomore at the university, I had never dreamed of becoming (or demoting myself to) a translator. But since I started working here [the World Bookstore], whenever I meet an acquaintance, he always asks me: “What do you do? You translate, don't you?” as if my only competence were translation. I always answer: “No, I compile dictionaries.” Although dictionary compilation is even more boring than translation, at least I let them know my competence is not limited to translation.) The young translator expresses displeasure with translation by humorously using dictionary compilation (which he actually did do) to hide his work, as if he were ashamed of what he was doing; he expresses contempt for translation, even though he devoted his entire life to translating Shakespeare. Thus it seems as if there is a radical contradiction. In reality though, his contempt for translation in general only proves that his choice of Shakespeare was personal; his work no longer belonged to the realm of conventional translation because he transcended it through his identification with Shakespeare. According to Song Qingru, “他工作的时间,总是全神贯注,不知有莎翁,或剧中人物,或自己的区别” (“When he worked, he was so concentrated that he forgot there were differences between him and Shakespeare or between him and the characters in the play”).36 Zhu's greatest regret at the end of his life, she noted, was to leave her, their one-year-old son, and his unfinished translations behind him.37 In this sense, his translations were no longer his professional duty but an indispensable part of his life—a part as important as his beloved wife and toddler son.Before Zhu Shenghao started working on Shakespeare in 1935, a number of famous authors, including Liang Shiqiu, had already published translations. After having looked at them carefully, Zhu concluded: 中国读者耳莎翁之大名已久,文坛知名之士,亦尝将其作品, 译出多种,然历观坊间各译本,失之于粗疏草率者尚少,失之 于拘泥生硬者实凡有徒。拘泥字句之结果,不仅原作神味,荡 然无存,甚且艰深晦涩,有若天书,令人不能促读,此则译者 之过,莎翁不能任其咎者也。38(Chinese readers have heard of Shakespeare for a long time. Well-known writers also tried to publish their translations. But as I looked at the different translations available, I found a few of them to be rough and hasty, although most of them are too overcautious and rigid. Because of this rigidity, not only is the original allure completely lost but also the language is so obscure that it becomes almost unintelligible. It is impossible to grasp the meaning quickly. We cannot blame Shakespeare for this shortcoming; his translators are the ones responsible for this.) For Zhu Shenghao, translating Shakespeare correctly, as most of his predecessors had already done, was far from enough. He wanted to have the best possible version of Shakespeare in China, and these earlier translations, in his view, did not do enough justice to Shakespeare's works. He believed the beauty of Shakespeare's language was a crucial factor distinguishing him in world literature. Through his own translations, Zhu wanted to convey to Chinese readers a pleasure similar to the one he experienced as a reader of the English text while preserving the spirit of the original as faithfully as possible.Through his translations, Zhu wanted to be able to overcome, if not completely, at least in part, most of the linguistic and cultural barriers that might prevent Chinese readers from appreciating Shakespeare, and he wanted to preserve his native readers' fascination with Shakespeare's works in China. Apparently, his standard for this borderless utopia was so high that it appeared almost unachievable. But he indeed succeeded in not only fascinating his Chinese readers with the story but also with the “allureme” of the language itself, as if Shakespeare's plays were masterpieces written in Chinese and not translated from an alien culture. I enjoy reading his translated language almost as much as I enjoy reading The Dream of the Red Chamber, my favorite Chinese novel.How did Zhu Shenghao achieve what seemed unachievable in translation? He explained that 余译此书之宗旨,第一在求于最大可能之范围内,保持原作之神 韵,必不得已而求其次,亦必以明白晓畅之字句,忠实传达原 文之意趣;而于逐字逐句对照式之硬译,则未敢赞同。凡遇原 文中与中国语法不合之处,往往再四咀嚼,不惜全部更易原文 之结构,务使作者之命豁然呈露,不为晦涩之字句所掩蔽。每 译一段竟,必先自拟为读者,查阅译文中有无暧昧不明之处。39(I translate these works according the following principles: first of all, I have tried as much as possible to capture the original appeal. Then, if I have no other choice, I look for clear and fluent expressions to preserve the charm of the original. But I do not agree with the rigid method of word-by-word translation. Whenever I run into something incompatible with Chinese grammar, I repeatedly and carefully go through the original words, sparing no effort to change entire sentence structures in order to make the original meaning as clear as the daylight, free from any obscure expressions. When I finish a paragraph, I transform myself into a reader, to examine if there is anything obscure.) Zhu Shenghao went way beyond simple translation; he created multiple levels of meaning as he transplanted the English author onto the soil of Chinese culture. In semicolonial China, most intellectuals still looked up to the West, as the call for “complete Westernization,” one of the well-known May Fourth slogans, demonstrated. That was partly why most Shakespeare translators tended to follow the original texts slavishly even to the detriment of the fluency of the Chinese language; in part, though, it was also difficult to understand the richness and complexity of Shakespeare's language thoroughly. Thanks to his unusual gift for both the English and Chinese languages, Zhu Shenghao was able to avoid this commonly shared timidity among Chinese translators. Despite his shyness, he was fearlessly independent, never hesitating to criticize any masters, be they Western or Chinese, including Shakespeare himself.40 In the process of translation, he refused to use other translations, such as Liang Shiqiu's, as references, because he wanted to preserve his creative freedom at any price.41 The high quality of Zhu's translations owes to his broad and profound knowledge of the English language and English culture, his impeccable mastering of Chinese poetic language and grammar, and his confidence in his independent judgment.Zhu judged his Shakespeare translations not only in terms of their literary quality but also in terms of their potential to be performed successfully on stage. He was passionate about Shakespeare as a reader as well as a spectator. He singled out Shakespeare among the four masters of world literature he admired because, as we have seen, “其剧本且在各国舞台与银幕上历久搬演而弗衰” (“his plays continue to attract large audiences on stage and on screen in different countries”).42 Zhu thus tried his best in his translations to communicate to readers as well as to potential spectators in China the original spirit of the works not only on paper but on an imaginary stage: 又自拟为舞台上之演员,审辨语调之是否顺口,音节之是否调和,一字一句之未惬,往往苦思累日。43(I would also play the role of an actor on stage in order to detect whether the intonation was fluent or whether the rhythm was in harmony. If I was not satisfied with one word or one sentence, I often spent several days continually thinking about it.) Fortunately, not only did Zhu Shenghao sing well, but he was also a good performer. Despite his shyness, he even performed the Virgin Mary on stage one Christmas at Zhijiang University; most students who didn't know him believed it was a female student who gave this amazing performance.44 He used his musical and performing talent to enhance his translations of Shakespeare. Thus, when we hear his translations on the soundtrack of a film or in a theatrical performance based on Shakespeare's play in China, we cannot help but admire the seamlessly beautiful and performable nature of his Chinese.In short, Zhu Shenghao used up his life energy at a young age to re-create a Shakespeare in China, making Shakespeare almost as popular and influential in China as in his native country. During the Sino-Japanese War and under extremely difficult circumstances, such as poverty, sickness, shortage of reference materials, and the absence of institutional and community support, Zhu was largely able to achieve his goal, although owing to his untimely death, he finished only thirty-one and a half of the thirty-seven plays. His life was like a brilliant shooting star, illuminating the sky of world literature in China. Though he left this world seven decades ago, today his starlight still shines in the sky of our modern cultural heritage.
Publication Year: 2012
Publication Date: 2012-12-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 2
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