I have a plan to write a musical based on the Oxford English Dictionary, simply because it's about the worst idea I could imagine. "What's that supposed to mean?" would be the opening number. I think the show may simply be called OED! or O! E! D! or something along those lines.
What on earth brought that up? Oddly, a novel about Chinese history of the 20th century. Which I had to read in translation, Chinese being one of the blind points in my education. Along with French, Russian, German, Greek (Ancient and Modern), Spanish, Anglo-Saxon and any number of other languages that has meant I have had to read many books and poetry in translation. I can feel the writers in other languages berating me, like the Baker in "The Hunting of the Snark".
I told you in German, I told you in Dutch
I told you in Hebrew and Greek
But I wholly forgot (and it vexes me much)
That English is what you speak.
Translation, like navigation, is always a difficult art. Seamus Heaney, having translated "Beowulf" into modern English, called translation ‘breaking rocks for pleasure’. The art is to translate creative works into a different language while preserving the style and the idiomatic and poetic qualities of the original. And it’s difficult. When "Summer of the Seventeenth Doll" enjoyed overseas success, one commentator wondered ‘How do you translate “You little trimmer!” into Swedish?” Not many of us can do Clive James’ trick of learning new languages expressly to read in them. And so we depend on the skill of the translator. In the end, the perfect translation that conveys all the nuance of an original work cannot exist. Much as I love ‘"Cyrano de Bergerac" I know that in a sense I can never know it in the same way that a French speaker can.
A similar but very different problem exists when adapting works from one form to another. The book I have just read was "Farewell my concubine" by Lillian Lee, translated by Andrea Lingenfelter. I first encountered this work as an extraordinary 1993 film, directed by Kaige Chen. I remember being astonished by this film, although I have not seen it since. I did not even know it was based on a novel until I saw it in my local library. The film is faithful to the story of two boys trained in the Peking Opera, who survive the Japanese invasion, World War Two, the Chinese Civil War and the excesses of the Communist regime. There are some differences, particularly the ending but this is to be expected. What works on the page may not work visually, and vice versa.
Chen Diayi and Duan Xialou meet as children at a training school for Peking Opera. The training is strict and brutal. The stronger Xialou takes Diayi under his wing and their friendship lasts into their adulthood when they become the two biggest stars of the Opera. Diayi falls in love with his friend, a love that cannot be returned and is threatened when Xialou marries. All their lives are cast into chaos as history envelops them. They suffer imprisonment, war, and the mindless violence of the Cultural Revolution.
The Cultural Revolution was one of the horrifying events of the Twentieth Century but we in the West have all but forgotten it. Children were instructed to overthrow all the cultural baggage of centuries of Chinese history. Valuable artefacts, art works and books were destroyed and thousands, if not millions, were tortured, imprisoned and worse. The director of the film was one of those children, and betrayed his own father into prison. His film was in part his act of contrition.
Again I was left to wonder why people can still call themselves left-wing without any of the opprobrium attached to someone who calls themselves right-wing. Left-wing governments were a development only of the Twentieth Century, yet their body count exceeds all the governments that preceded them. Technology may account for some of that number but by no means all. In Russia, China, and Cambodia they killed their citizens with a randomness and ferocity unmatched even by Hitler’s Germany. Still today North Korea keeps its citizens in poverty while the leaders live a life of luxury. If the Twentieth Century taught us anything it was that no political outlook has an exclusive claim on justice and right, yet we seem intent on ignoring that lesson.
What little Chinese literature I have read always strikes me as having a dry objective tone. I have no idea if this is a quality of Chinese writing or its translation into English. Even so, it still has its haunting qualities. The novel takes its title from the opera most performed by the two protagonists, about a Chinese general surrounded by his enemies, deserted by all but his concubine. The lyrics in part run:
My horse cannot advance.
My horse cannot advance, what can I do?
I cannot define why, but I find those lines very affecting. That’s poetry I suppose - even in translation.
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