Chronology Entry
Year
1922
Text
[Carroll, Lewis]. Alisi man you qi jing ji. Zhao Yuanren yi [ID D8584].
Zhao Yuanren : "The first step of my way to translate this book is, I'd think of what we'll say in spoken Chinese at sight of a sentence. After that I put it down, checked it against the original. And then, in order to reach the standard of 'every word is faithfully translates', I tried to make some amendments, and kept alert never to get it sound like a foreign language. It would be impossible to translate this book perfectly into Chinese if we didn't employ the vernacular Chinese, so this translation can serve as a sample to judge the vernacular Chinese too.
The joke in this book is of another kind, whose sense lies in its nonsense. Why ? There're two reasons : firstly, the author intends to create an artwork instead of a fable ; secondly, the so-calles 'nonsense' in English means 'butong' in Chinese. However, not all nonsense is significant. The point of nonsense is that, it sounds like a word of sense, but nonsense in fact ; it looks like a thing of sense, but nonsense too. The book is a reference book of philosophy and logic as well. When probing into the profoundest of logic, many puzzles of 'nonsense' will emerge, and some are unsolvable till now."
Sekundärliteratur
Hu Rong : Zhao Yuanren found the book for children would offer a best sample for his linguistic experiment : "The Chinese language is now undergoing an examination, and it's good chance to make an experiment for several purposes". To translate Alice's adventures in Wonderland into Chinese looked for him like a mission impossible to put such a book full of 'nonsense' into Chinese, the vernacular Chinese particularly, since no one had succeeded in the last half century. He acquired the best reward by attaching his name to his favorite book forever as a result.
Zhao Yuanren : "The first step of my way to translate this book is, I'd think of what we'll say in spoken Chinese at sight of a sentence. After that I put it down, checked it against the original. And then, in order to reach the standard of 'every word is faithfully translates', I tried to make some amendments, and kept alert never to get it sound like a foreign language. It would be impossible to translate this book perfectly into Chinese if we didn't employ the vernacular Chinese, so this translation can serve as a sample to judge the vernacular Chinese too.
The joke in this book is of another kind, whose sense lies in its nonsense. Why ? There're two reasons : firstly, the author intends to create an artwork instead of a fable ; secondly, the so-calles 'nonsense' in English means 'butong' in Chinese. However, not all nonsense is significant. The point of nonsense is that, it sounds like a word of sense, but nonsense in fact ; it looks like a thing of sense, but nonsense too. The book is a reference book of philosophy and logic as well. When probing into the profoundest of logic, many puzzles of 'nonsense' will emerge, and some are unsolvable till now."
Sekundärliteratur
Hu Rong : Zhao Yuanren found the book for children would offer a best sample for his linguistic experiment : "The Chinese language is now undergoing an examination, and it's good chance to make an experiment for several purposes". To translate Alice's adventures in Wonderland into Chinese looked for him like a mission impossible to put such a book full of 'nonsense' into Chinese, the vernacular Chinese particularly, since no one had succeeded in the last half century. He acquired the best reward by attaching his name to his favorite book forever as a result.
Mentioned People (2)
Carroll, Lewis
(Daresbury, Cheshire 1832-1898 Gildford) : Schriftsteller
Zhao, Yuanren
(Tianjin 1892-1982 Cambridge, Mass.) : Sinologe, Phonologist, Linguist, Agassiz Professor für Linguistik Center for Chinese Linguistics, Department of Oriental Languages, University of California
Subjects
Literature : Occident : Great Britain
Documents (1)
| # | Year | Bibliographical Data | Type / Abbreviation | Linked Data |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2010 | Hu, Rong. Zhao Yuanren's translation of Alice's adventures in wonderland and its significance in modern Chinese literary history. In : Frontiers of literary studies in China ; vol. 4, no 3 (2010). | Publication / Carro1 |
|