Brothers & How Reviewers Review
By Bruce Humes, published March 7, 2009, 7:30p.m.
If I gave a damn about how the New York Times critiqued my work, I wouldn't want to be Carlos Rojas or Eileen Cheng-yin Chow right now. Or, for that matter, the editor of their translation of Yu Hua's Brothers.
Critic Jess Row certainly gives the English version of Yu Hua's <兄弟> (Brothers) a less-than-flattering review. And it may well deserve it. I wouldn't know, not having read either the original or the translation.
But what intrigued me about the review are questions like these that occurred as I read it:
---Does Jess Row know Chinese? This is never clarified, yet it is implied throughout that he does. ("reading Brothers in English can be a daunting, sometimes vexing and deeply confusing experience. Partly this has to do with the difficulty of finding an English equivalent for Yu Hua’s extremely direct and graphic Chinese.") I would certainly like to know, because the ability to compare the two versions would offer a deeper understanding of the book, and empower the critic to offer an informed opinion about the quality of the translation.
---Since the translation is being discussed and even questioned here, why doesn't Row briefly introduce the translators' background and qualifications? Just for the record, Rojas is Assistant Professor of Chinese Cultural Studies at Duke University, and Chow is Associate Professor of Chinese Literary and Cultural Studies at Harvard University. They co-edited Rethinking Chinese Popular Culture: Cannibalizations of the Canon.
---Are most readers looking for the familiar, or an affirmation of the reality they know, when they read a novel? And have we come to expect authors to "acknowledge" us when they spin a yarn about their own society? ("While their styles couldn’t be more different, Yu Hua shares with Lu Xun a certain cultural inwardness; we never have the sense that he is addressing a non-Chinese audience or is concerned with how China is represented to the rest of the world.")
---"Does this mean Brothers is untranslatable?" asks Row. It strikes me that there are an awful lot of weird or cutting-edge books out there that have been translated from the French or the Russian, etc. Why is it that when the book in question is Chinese, the first question that pops to mind is whether it can be meaningfully rendered in a European language? Just how "mysterious" is 21st century China to the West, and who is creating, or even manipulating, this perception? If the translation of Chinese literature were carried out by the superb translators and editors who brought Tolstoy and Proust and Kawabata into our lives, would China still seem so "mysterious"?
Bruce Humes
www.bruce-humes.com
Chinese Books, English Reviews
Comments
Three words for that review: lonelier than thou.
Right up there with the style of Lonely Planet China circa 1996. He must feel so pleased with himself.
William, March 9, 9:51a.m.
From his webpage, Jess Row taught English in Hong Kong for two years with the Yale-China program in the nineties. Who knows if he had studied any Chinese before then, but presumably he picked up some knowledge of Chinese while in HK. But knowledge of Chinese doesn't mean knowing Chinese. And while you can judge a translation from many angles, I'm always less impressed when large statements about translation aren't backed up by specific examples of failed or successful linguistic transfer.
The article seemed like a mass of contradictions to me, and not the illuminating kind you'd want from an ordained dharma teacher of Kwam Um Zen.
thank you kindly for this post, bruce (i've taught your translation a number of times, but only recently discovered this blog).
we're irked, but mostly because it would have been nice for yu hua to have gotten a smarter reviewer in the NYT for his book. disliking the novel or lamenting the translation (while citing specific passages) would be perfectly acceptable positions; mystifying who 'gets' chinese references and condemning translations from chinese in general--more like a C+ essay. to quote yu hua: it's a bit too 自鳴得意.
eileen chow, March 9, 12:07p.m.
Hello Bruce and others reading this,
Many thanks for the attention you’ve paid to my review. To answer the question you posed, yes, I do read Chinese. My whole experience of reading Brothers, as I tried to convey, was one of simultaneous appreciation and frustration—appreciation of how important the novel is in the context of contemporary China, and frustration with how difficult it was to read in English. I did credit Eileen Chow and Carlos Rojas with doing a heroic job, but the result, in my view, was not successful as a novel in English.
The larger point I wanted to make with this review was that part of the problem with the reception of a novel like this in the Anglophone world is the level of fundamental ignorance here about basic touchstones of Chinese culture. If I may, I’d like to illustrate this with a very small example from Brothers. On page 615 of the uncorrected galleys, which I read for my review, there is a sentence, “Who knew that Baldy Li was such a Lin Daiyu?” I seized on this in my review as evidence that Yu Hua was building a parallel between the love triangles in Brothers and in Hongloumeng: a parallel that would be obvious to a Chinese reader but which would mean nothing at all to a typical Anglophone reader. This, I would say, is exactly the kind of problem that no translator can fix without an elaborate, and counterproductive, scholarly apparatus. When I saw the final published edition of Brothers, the line had been changed to “Who knew that Baldy Li was such a sentimental heroine?” That, to me, seems to be the story of this whole translation: it’s trying to find English equivalents for Chinese concepts that just don’t resonate with readers who have no exposure to Chinese culture.
As to whether Chinese novels get “special treatment” in the sense of asking a question like, “Is this translatable?”: first, I do think, for a hundred reasons, that it is more difficult to translate Chinese novels into English than German or French or Spanish novels, broadly speaking (not that translating European novels is any easy task!); and second, while I appreciate your wariness about any representation of China as mysterious or untranslatable, that’s not what I was trying to do. I was trying to raise the question of whether or not the Anglophone reading public has the basic cultural apparatus to appreciate this particular novel. You write, “Are most readers looking for the familiar, or an affirmation of the reality they know, when they read a novel? And have we come to expect authors to "acknowledge" us when they spin a yarn about their own society?” That is exactly my point: I think, unfortunately, that Anglophone readers and editors do look for the familiar and avoid the unfamiliar or seemingly “obscure” (like, say, “Lin Daiyu”?), and that’s what limits the accessibility of this novel, no matter how well it’s translated.
And thanks for drawing my attention to your very interesting blog. Jess
Jess Row, March 9, 8:58p.m.
How is the reference to Lin Daiyu in the Chinese original different to, say, a reference to Genji Minamoto in a Japanese novel, or Pantagruel in a French one? The point you illustrate is one that all translations must face and I don't think Chinese should be singled out from any other language - especially when we are talking about modern Chinese fiction.
Rabelais, March 10, 11:10a.m.
It is a little hard to tell from the review exactly what's being identified as the great stumbling block to acceptance. The last paragraph talks about references to traditional Chinese culture and literature but, as 'Rabelais' says, that has hardly posed an obstacle to literature from other countries. The fact that 'Lin Daiyu' got changed to 'sentimenal heroine' seems to prove both that the problem exists, and that it's not particularly serious. Sure, no one will know who Lin Daiyu is, but neither does it ruin the book to have it thus altered.
What seems more problematic is Brothers' inheritance of literary form from Dream of the Red Chamber and Journey to the West, meaning it "doesn't fit into any narrative category familiar to the Western reader". That sort of thing really could sink a book, but is that what's wrong with Brothers? I agree that the genre-bending is disconcerting, but it's hardly unacceptable, and any Western reader who can stomach the formats of the Odyssey or Don Quixote can probably deal with Brothers. The Cultural Revolution has imprinted itself on Western cultural awareness sufficiently that readers won't feel at sea, I believe, and as for the second half of the book, as the review itself says, this is a "social novel of the late 20th century": the conflict between ambition and sentiment is not a new one to us.
I'm inclined to believe that Western readers will accept Chinese literature when they decide that Chinese literature is acceptable, ie that it's far more a function of readers' attitudes going into a book. That probably means one or two really stellar books, break-out hits that give readers a sense of location and security from which they can judge other Chinese literature, something so good it's seen as literature first and Chinese literature second. I'm not seeing anything like that on the horizon; Wolf Totem wasn't it, and it doesn't look like Brothers will be, either…
"...any Western reader who can stomach the formats of the Odyssey or Don Quixote can probably deal with Brothers." (Eric, above)
Whoa there! That's asking a lot of your "Western reader," Eric.
Personally, I don't know anyone who read these works for pleasure. I read parts of the former when I was in college because I was required to. Period.
But these are Canons of Western Literature and therefore "required reading."
Brothers ain't. Yet!
Bruce Humes
www.bruce-humes.com
Chinese Books, English Reviews
Hi, Bruce--
I didn't read from Eric's comment that Brothers was equivalent to The Odyssey or Don Quixote; I read that the use of a structure, if that's what it is, playing off of 紅樓夢 or 西遊記 is equivalent to, say, how the structure of The Odyssey comes up again and again, from Ulysses to Cold Mountain. And if we can accept one, we can accept the other.
But I also think that you're underestimating the reader when you say you don't know anyone who reads canonical works for pleasure. Maybe you don't, but they're canonical in part because people have liked them, and I'm sure we've got lots of people who say, you know, I've never read Don Quixote, I'd like to try it out. And then they read it, for pleasure. That's one of the reasons Edith Grossman's recent translation of that book was so well received: people wanted to read it, and now they felt like they could.
As I see it, underestimating the reader is a big problem, and it's the same problem that makes me unhappy about Row's review of Brothers. I expect that readers interested in reading a Chinese novel will be interested in reading a Chinese novel, and that the challenges, including how the Chinese literary past might stand between contemporary Chinese writing and contemporary Anglophone writing, are all part of the fun. Too many challenges means it's not so much fun anymore, but I think we've got readers who are willing to be challenged.
I read Row's review as acknowledging the challenges inherent in translating Chinese literature, and then giving up in the face of them. I agree with him about the challenges, but I disagree about the giving up: to me, it just means that we have all the more work to do in advocating for Chinese literature--and literature in translation from all languages--so that these challenges can become a thing of the past, and we can move on to new challenges. Same thing with canonical writing: it may be a challenge, but that just shows me how much more we have to do to achieve what we want.
Perhaps not entirely irrelevant but a bit of a tangent from this immediate thread (I just came back from the translators and Yu Hua at a panel at Harvard this evening, so it was on my mind then too) - a chapter in Haun Saussy's older book, The Problem of the Chinese Aesthetic, that discusses yiyin (the “lingering tone”) as an aesthetic category and then goes into the history of Jesuit translations of the bible, (Matteo Ricci) their interaction with the problem, and their struggle to fit translations into a Confucian schema/verbal constellation. (A bit of a problem that reverses the powerplays of Orientalism/untranslatability that are normally tangled up in things.)
RPC, March 12, 9:06p.m.
I thought it interesting that, in his review, Row commented that there were times when he wished Brothers came with footnotes - although he conceded that footnotes can be a turnoff for readers (especially if they appear in a non-academic, mainstream work of fiction such as Brothers).
I've often wondered if it might not be a good idea to return to endnotes in fiction translation. Readers who want to crack right through can do so and not get hung up on the fine print at the bottom of the page, but those who crave more cultural or historical background can flip to the back and read what could well be some fascinating tidbits. It seems that certain novels - Li Er's Huaqiang, Yan Lianke's Shouhuo, Qian Zhongshu's Weicheng (Fortress Besieged) or nearly anything by Wang Xiaobo - might benefit from this approach.
@Cindy "I've often wondered if it might not be a good idea to return to endnotes in fiction translation."
Good point. I think the answer is yes, footnotes may well be in order in some cases.
But how are the footnotes presented? Where they are placed -- on the page itself, at the end of a chapter, or at the back of the book -- what sort of information do they contain, and how they are written are all very important.
When it comes to popular fiction, anything that smacks of academia is an instant turn-off.
Personally, I find French author Stephane Fiere is on to something when it comes to footnotes. His novels about China contain frequent references to choses chinoises. His approach is to make the footnotes virtually part of the text. In La promesse de Shanghai,there are footnotes in French to explain puns like 向前看 (向钱看). In his recently released novel, Caprices de Chine, Chinese occasionally appears both in the text and in the footnotes. It's all very tongue-in-cheek, which just happens to fit the satirical style of his novels.
No doubt purists would argue that it is the translator's job to remain "invisible"...
Bruce Humes
www.bruce-humes.com
Chinese Books, English Reviews
Cindy's call for the return of endnotes is good. There's also a lot to be said for a good introduction. Even with English literature, I've found a good introduction very useful for giving the context necessary to bring the novel back to life. And surely a translator's introduction would give the translator a chance to assert themselves while keeping the novel itself pure?
Chris Waugh, March 14, 7:36a.m.
Though this thread has been interesting for many reasons, I think the crux of this discussion has been lost amidst larger, more contextual problems. Setting aside the question of whether footnotes should be used more in novels (translated or otherwise), or what responsibilities readers of translated fiction should bear, the fact remains that Mr. Row's pithy and sanctimonious review should have never been published. Not only do his citations of the translation's shortcomings (two, by my count) fall far short of any measure of success in a translation, but they also lay bare his own dilettantish predilections, resulting in a review that neglects to actually do any reviewing. That Mr. Row finds his reading experience of the English (it is clear by now that he has no grounds for actual comparison between the Chinese original and its translation) frustrating due its lack of yiyin suggests to me that perhaps Mr. Row should stick to reading the Classics. Is this his standard for reading all fiction, or just that from those permanently ancient Oriental countries? And how exactly is a singular, offhand reference to the main character of Hongloumeng (at which point a footnote or some other type of explanation wold have drawn unnecessary and pointless scrutiny to the remark, much like Mr. Row) deepen our reading of the novel or Baldy Li in any way? Should we start complaining pompously every time a love story fails to properly acknowledge its debt to Romeo and Juliet? This is no heavy literary allusion, but at most a popular cultural lexical one, which in my opinion the translators have accounted for nicely with "sentimental heroine." Regarding the other piece of evidence on the inscrutability of the original, if you are still spending your time searching for that timeless rendering of the word imbued with such untranslatable "pathos" that you "suspect" must exist, Mr. Row, its right here: ASS.
kuyahukduk, March 14, 5:08p.m.
It seems some commenters on this thread are assuming that Row thinks brothers is untranslateable, and is so because of some innate Chinese unknowability that attaches itself to the book when presented to a Western audience.
Yet Row states exactly the opposite. He writes:
"Not because the novel is obscure or allusive or stereotypically “Chinese.” “Brothers” is, in fact, very much a social novel of the late 20th century. It deals with the emergence of China as a capitalist market state, a story familiar to anyone who reads the newspapers, and it’s as blunt, puerile, libidinous and trashily sentimental as any 24 hours of American reality TV. All that ought to make it a blockbuster in the West, as it has been in China, where on its release in 2005 and 2006 (in two volumes) it sold more than a million copies."
This is how Row introduces the problems in translation he finds in the English version of Brothers. As I read it, he's criticisms of the translation are not at all based in some notion of an untranslatable "Chinese-ness".
Niall, March 16, 3:35p.m.
a review that neglects to actually do any reviewing
kuyahukduk's paragraph pretty much sums up my own feelings on reading the review. Not up to the standards(?) of the New York Times.
Micah Sittig, March 17, 8:16p.m.