“Faithfulness, elegance and expressiveness” have been traditional standards for translation, but the Stray Birds translated by Feng Tang and lately published was deemed to violate the top criteria and aroused strong controversy, hence getting removed off shelves today.
On Dec. 28th morning, Zheng Zhong, Head of Zhejiang Literature and Art Press, announced on his official Weibo Account, “In view of the controversies that Stray Birds translated by Feng Tang aroused in domestic literature and translation circles after its publication by Zhejiang Literature and Art Press, we’ve decided to recall the book from bookstores and online shopping platforms starting today, and we will organize experts to revaluate and review the contents in the translated version as the basis of follow-up decisions. Thank you for your long-term care and support!”
Later, The Paper had a interview with Zheng Zhong, who admitted that “(his translation) did cause many and great disputes” and “we received complaints and objections from many readers”, so “it’s a decision made by our press according to the feedbacks of readers and the media.”
“Every reader has a certain degree of freedom in appreciating pure literary translation. On the one hand, the translation was praised by readers and experts in some aspects, some believing it to excel the classical translations by translation masters for some parts. However, most disputes are about the elegance of this translation. Though Stray Birds is not exclusively for teenagers, there’re indeed many teenagers reading Tagore’s poems. Without rating system in Chinese book market, such a translation may mislead our teenagers. Therefore, we accepted the kind criticism of some reading promoting organizations and readers and decided to recall it for the time being.”
Talking of the constitution of the expert’s team to assume follow-up reexamination and the time for their work, Zheng said it’s not fixed yet. “We need to recall all the books in the market firstly.”
When Feng’s translation of Stray Birds came out this year, it promptly rippled the academic circles. On the 24th, People’s Daily published “Don’t make distortion in the name of translation” in its column Cultural World, saying “To translate a classical work so randomly as Feng Tang did is to disrespect the work and disrespect the job of translation” and “the Stray Birds translated by Feng Tang is neither faithful nor expressive or elegant. Translating ‘mask’ into ‘crotch’ in Chinese, or ‘hospitable’ into ‘slutty’ in Chinese, is pure violation of the original meaning; besides, pervasive dirty words and net glossary also damaged the poetic beauty created by Tagore.”
Though the essay believed that Feng Tang had the freedom of showing his own style and it’s hard to rule out the possibility that someone would love the style, “a translation at will without any constraints is in fact no longer translation. Also, we should be very cautious about publishing a translation of a masterpiece, for which there’ve been several classical translations. Without the mind of honesty based on polishing words and expressions, one should not attempt to be a translator as he will neither seek faithfulness to the original text nor transcend the beauty of the original one.”
Despite all the criticisms, the public also showed some support to Feng’s translation, and the most widely followed one was an article posted by Chinese sociologist Li Yinhe on Dec. 27th afternoon on her Sina Blog, entitled “Stray Birds translated by Feng Tang is so far the best Chinese translation I know”. She began the article by saying, “Feng’s translation of Stray Birds lately aroused great disputes, and after reading those comments, I came to find that pros are few while cons are many. I have been liking his books, so I think I should say something for him.”
Then she listed some translations and claimed that “the translation has problem not in ‘faithfulness’ but in ‘elegance’”, “he used Internet glossary only for the purpose of rhyming”, and “talking of poetic beauty, Feng’s translation is much better than Zheng Zhenduo’s version”, and came to the conclusion that “to be fair, Feng’s translation is not so bad; it’s just a translation of too strong personal style of a translator. As it’s been recognized by the public that Zheng’s translation is the highest-level among all translations of the masterpiece, and I think Feng’s translation exceeds Zheng’s, so logically, Feng’s translation of Stray Birds is so far the best Chinese translation of the book.”
The article was reposted again and again on Weibo and WeChat Moments, arousing another sensation about Feng’s translation.
