Book by an icon of Chinese literature is translated into Portuguese for the first time

A Unicamp Publisher launches the first title in the new Classics of Chinese Literature series. This is Lu Xun's collection of memories, Morning flowers picked at dusk. Lu Xun is an icon of Chinese modernism and a pioneer in the use of vernacular Chinese, a form of written Chinese that incorporates linguistic varieties from across the country. It is an opposition to classical Chinese, whose writing was standardized and adopted in imperial China until the beginning of the 20th century.

To present a little of the work, Editora da Unicamp interviewed the translator of the texts, Peggy Yu, a master in applied linguistics from Unicamp, and one of the directors of the Confucius Institute, Bruno De Conti. The publisher's director, Edwiges Morato, also responds about the importance of the partnership with the Institute and the collection of this classic of modern Chinese prose.

Editora da Unicamp – What was the idea behind launching the Classics of Chinese Literature series and what are your expectations for the series?

Edwiges Morato: With this beautiful volume of Morning flowers picked at dusk, by Lu Xun, a classic of modern Chinese prose, Editora da Unicamp opens a partnership with the Confucius Institute in the form of an editorial project characterized as a series, which also has a beautiful and delicate visual identity. This partnership with Editora da Unicamp is one of the cultural arms of a cooperation agreement, signed in 2014, which covers several areas of knowledge – technology, economy and culture.

The Classics of Chinese Literature series begins with morning flowers, a work that must be followed by other publications, by different authors and literary genres. The objective is to provide the Brazilian publishing market, in a bilingual edition, with classic works of Chinese literature. The collection is an important teaching tool for Portuguese-speaking students of Mandarin, as well as for Chinese who study the Portuguese language or are interested in it. It is also worth noting that the books have critical prefaces, which highlight and contextualize important aspects of Chinese history and culture.

The idea is that, being a bilingual collection, we can not only encourage Brazil's rapprochement with the Chinese language and culture, but also pave, through literary language, a path of mutual interest between two cultures. This is part of an engaging interaction between two peoples, between two countries. Stimulating qualified contact between different human experiences, between different forms of life, is one of the characteristics of book culture and one of the main functions of a university publisher, such as Editora da Unicamp.

Editora da Unicamp: What was the translation process like for Lu Xun, who is such a prominent author in modern Chinese literature? As a translator, what did she feel when bringing her collection of memoirs into Portuguese for the first time?

Peggy Yu: To answer the question, I believe I can divide the translation process into three stages: understanding, translation and appreciation. Today, reflecting on the translation journey, a Chinese saying immediately comes to mind that I compare myself to: “a calf that is not afraid of the tiger”. In other words, I was innocent and also fearless in suggesting the publication of Morning flowers picked at dusk and when translating the book. I remember that the first task I set out to do was read the ten chapters that make up the book at once, to get used to the spirit of Lu Xun. It involves his peculiar way of saying things, his unique style of approaching certain subjects and his critical and cynical look at the world. Afraid of not capturing the implicit meanings of this work by Lu Xun, I resorted to bibliographical studies. This stage of understanding made me reflect on the translator's condition as a good reader: one who critically dissects a text and delves into the ideas addressed, perhaps more than the author himself. Of course, he always maintained a healthy distance, so as not to run the risk of overinterpreting the text.

After that, I got into the translation itself. But the previous phase was still a translation, however, interlingual. It was a great challenge to translate an outstanding author, considered the “father of modern Chinese literature”, who, naturally, carries significant literary value. I confess that the process was quite challenging and painful, in a good way. Suffered (again, in a good way), by the difficulty in transmitting Lu Xun's critical message and his style to the target language, in this case, Portuguese. Professor Márcia Schmaltz, a great researcher, translator and interpreter from Chinese to Portuguese, has a text called “Lu Xun and the anatomy of a people”. In it, she said that “normalizing” the author’s style to transpose it into Portuguese is a challenge.

As a translator, I felt that the challenge of deciphering the author's “intentions”, added to the difficulties encountered in translation, culminated in responsibility. I was not “just” translating a person’s memories, but transmitting, through translation, a social critique that can lead the Brazilian people to understand how China became what it is today. Thus, each choice and decision I made carried not only the textual content itself, but a clue to access a China that was entering modernity. Therefore, I felt a lot of responsibility!

In the end, what I called “appreciation” was my reading as a Portuguese reader. At this stage, I read the translations I made trying to feel the effects of the words – critical, ironic and cynical – that I felt when reading the book in the original language. It was a moment of adjustments to the translation, during which I asked myself: “if you were Brazilian, would you understand?”; “would you catch the irony?” etc. It was as if I ignored my Chinese identity and questioned the translation so I could improve it! And, of course, I can't help but thank the preparers and reviewers who greatly improved the translation!

Editora da Unicamp: Were there chapters or excerpts whose translations were more challenging? Which ones and why?

Peggy Yu: Yes! Mainly, when the narrative brought culturally charged expressions or that made very specific allusions to Chinese culture. These challenges were most evident in chapters 4 and 5, respectively, “The Procession of the Five Fearful Gods” and “Wuchang or Life-Is-Impermanent”, because, in these chapters, Lu Xun addresses scenarios that are typically Chinese, with descriptions culturally charged. In chapter 4, for example, the author describes, from his perspective when he was very young, the gods of the Chinese folk procession, which involves gods with colorful faces, the Dragon King, who made it rain, the “monsters” of the sea, the Virgin Mei, among other figures. The written images are numerous and vivid.

I was wondering, during the translation, whether the Brazilian people, accustomed to Catholicism, which is monotheistic, would understand the enthusiasm of Lu Xun as a child in front of the procession of the gods. And also, I can't help but comment on the fact that the boy Lu Xun's father asked his son to “memorize” and “recite” a classical text if he wanted to go to the procession. I believe that it is not part of Brazilian education to ask children to “memorize” classic texts (or am I wrong?), and, therefore, during the translation process of this chapter, I paid special attention to ensure that the narrative did not end up being “headless”. ”.

Chapter 5 also involves typically Chinese fantastic beings, such as the King of the Dead, the painted faces, the Oxheads, etc. Initially, I wanted to associate the image of the protagonist, Wuchang – Life-is-impermanent – ​​with that of the Grim Reaper or Death. But I soon gave up, because it would be too domesticating a translation. In both the above and previous cases, I had to decide whether to phonetically transcribe the name of these ghostly creatures or translate the terms literally. In the end, I decided to do the literal translation, so that the Portuguese text wouldn't lose its fluency.

Other difficulties, in addition to these challenges arising from cultural differences, were the word games and ironies used by the author. There are wordplays in the original text that arise from the fact that the Chinese language is tonal and presents homophones with different meanings. In cases like this, I couldn't escape the footnote, as with the term “yangguizi”, in chapter 7, “My father's illness”.

Finally, I cannot help but talk about the difficulty in translating excerpts that were responses to the attacks that Lu Xun suffered at the time from his literary colleagues. A certain capacity for intertextuality was necessary to first understand and identify excerpts that were “answers” ​​and rewrite them so that they were not too far removed from the context of the narrative. Of course, in some cases, footnotes were used to explain the context, a feature that also exists in the Chinese version.

Unicamp Publisher: Lu Xun pioneered the use of vernacular Chinese, a written form that brings the varieties of the language used throughout China to its literature. How would you say this influences this author's narrative style?

Peggy Yu: Although the language used by Lu Xun is very close to modern Chinese, the literary and traditional language resources he used leave the narratives somewhat obscure in some passages. Therefore, in addition to their cynical and ironic style, the stories were not easy to understand without a keen and attentive eye. Therefore, I needed to research and rely on articles that discuss these narratives, so as not to miss the messages between the lines.

To transpose this very specific language into Portuguese, I thought a lot about the type of register I should use to compose the translated narratives. I thought about the texts of Gil Vicente, who introduced popular elements into his writing. But he was a Renaissance Portuguese! Lu Xun's pre-modern Chinese certainly wasn't that obscure (if I'm making a correct comparison).

The reflection also led me to think about Machado de Assis' style, ironic and pessimistic. I remember re-reading some Machado stories to see if this type of record would fit into my translation. The experience was great, because in a way, I found some parallelism in the styles of the two authors. In the end, as Professor Schmaltz would say, I “normalized” this type of language in Portuguese, taking care with the order of construction of sentences, the use of quotation marks and the choice of words – simple, but not obvious enough, to that a certain irony remained.

Unicamp Publisher: The book Morning flowers picked at dusk is the first in the new Classics of Chinese Literature series, the result of a partnership between the Confúcio Institute and Editora da Unicamp. What is the objective of this partnership?

Bruno DeConti: I would say that the partnership fulfills three important functions. The main objective is to contribute to reducing a gap in the education of the majority of the Brazilian population, which involves a profound lack of knowledge about Chinese culture. This idea of ​​translating classical Chinese works was created during one of the visits by Unicamp professors to China, organized annually by the Confucius Institute with the support of Unicamp's Executive Directorate of International Relations (DERI).

In 2018, our delegation included the then rector of Unicamp, professor Dr. Marcelo Knobel. In the midst of the activities we did there, Professor Marcelo was shocked to realize that we didn't know anything about some cultural references that are fundamental for the Chinese. Given this, he suggested to me and Professor Márcia Abreu, who accompanied us in the delegation and who, at the time, ran the Unicamp Publishing House – that we think about the possibility of translating Chinese classics into Portuguese.

It was from there that the conversations began and, soon after, the work began to be developed, with important support from employees at Editora da Unicamp and the Confúcio Institute. In 2021, professor Edwiges Morato took over the direction of the Editora and welcomed the project in the best way possible, not only supporting it, but institutionalizing this partnership through the creation of the Classics of Chinese Literature series, which we are now pleased to launch. In other words, it was a project embraced by many people who shared the perception that we needed to know more about China and its culture in Brazil.

In fact, for historical reasons, but also for political and economic reasons, we have always had a keen eye on the cultural production of the United States and Western Europe, but with a tremendous disregard for the rest of the world. And this negligence is not the result of chance, but constructed. Worse than a mere myopia in relation to the most distant areas of the globe, it is an uncritical subordination to the vision of the West, which throughout history has attributed to itself the status of a “civilized world”, creator of culture and science, in opposition to the exotic – if not barbaric – East. This prejudiced view towards the East in general, adds up, in the case of China, to an element that generated (and still generates) turbulence in this intercultural contact: the fact that it is a nation that went through a socialist revolution and that, to this day , defines itself as a socialist country. This, unfortunately, contributes to the fact that, through a Manichaean stance – also characteristic of the West – stereotypes surrounding China are reinforced.

The result is a tremendous lack of knowledge regarding China and Chinese culture. In all areas. We know almost nothing about Chinese music, Chinese cinema, visual arts and Chinese literature. I learned from my friend Antonio Florentino Neto, a great expert on traditional Chinese culture and thought, that the Western world simply rejected the idea that Chinese thought could be classified as philosophical. See where prejudices come from! To get around this problem, they created the category of “sinology”, placing there what they did not want to label as a Chinese philosophy.

Fortunately, there is a movement that seeks to address this cultural blindness, not just in relation to China, but to countries and peoples in the so-called “global South” – which includes, and very importantly, our own native peoples in America. Thus, in this dialogue between the Rectory, Editora da Unicamp and Instituto Confúcio, we realized the relevance of offering a simple contribution to this process, presenting the Brazilian – or Portuguese-speaking – public with the translation of classic works of Chinese literature. So, the first objective of the series is this: to give the Brazilian public access to important works of Chinese literature. Associatedly, there is a second objective, also very important. Mainly due to the rise of China as a major global economic and political power, the Brazilian population's interest in studying Mandarin is growing.

Here, at Unicamp's Confucius Institute, we have high school students (Cotuca and Cotil) and undergraduate and postgraduate students from the most diverse courses (literatures, economics, engineering, medicine, etc.), as well as teachers studying Mandarin. And the series we are launching publishes bilingual books, with the original texts, in Mandarin, and their versions in Portuguese. It is, therefore, an extremely useful teaching tool for Mandarin students at Unicamp and throughout Brazil.

Conversely, the material can be used by Portuguese students in China. At the Confucius Institute's partner university, Beijing Jiaotong (BJTU), there are Portuguese courses and some editions of each book that is released will be sent to them. We also have close contact with the University of Macau, since, in this former Portuguese colony, fewer and fewer families are using Portuguese on a daily basis, and that is why there are public policies to revive the study of Portuguese , even for the region to be used as a communication hub for relations between China and Brazil, as well as the entire Portuguese-speaking world. In this way, the series we are launching will be read by those interested in Chinese literature, but it will also be a very important teaching tool for students of Mandarin or Portuguese from different parts of the world.

Finally, the books we are publishing will always have an academic preface, contextualizing the work. In Morning flowers picked at dusk, for example, the Preface is by Fan Xing, from Peking University, a great connoisseur of Chinese and Brazilian literature. In her interesting text, prepared especially for our edition, she introduces Lu Xun to the Brazilian public through references to Graciliano Ramos. Thus, the third objective of the series is to provide rich bibliographical material for academic research on Chinese literature or on the authors and works we are translating.

Unicamp Editor: Why was Lu Xun's collection of memories chosen as the first work to be part of the series?

Bruno DeConti: The choice was made based on a dialogue between the Unicamp Editor, the Confúcio Institute and Peggy Yu, a great expert on Chinese language and culture, who did the beautiful work of translating the work. Our intention was to choose a classic author of Chinese literature, but little known in Brazil – precisely to give the Brazilian public the opportunity to get to know him/her. A few years ago, on a working visit to Shanghai – where Lu Xun spent part of his life –, I read references about the writer, which indicated him as one of the most important authors in modern Chinese literature.

I’m not a literature expert – far from it! – but reading is one of my greatest pleasures. So, I was astonished that I still didn't know Lu Xun and, at the same time, I was very curious to read his books. There, I bought one of them, in English, and I really liked it, especially its critical look – and amusing irony – at the Chinese society of its time (the first decades of the 20th century). When we were discussing the work to be translated, I therefore suggested Lu Xun. Then, we did a search to see the titles already translated and it was Peggy who suggested Morning flowers picked at dusk, still without translation into Portuguese – neither here nor in Portugal. We immediately accepted the suggestion and were all very happy with the result.

Unicamp Editor: Especially in times when diplomacy between Brazil and China is compromised by the irresponsible and rude comments of former minister Abraham Weintraub, Eduardo Bolsonaro and President Bolsonaro himself, how can cultural exchange between our countries reinforce friendly relationship between the Chinese and Brazilian people?

Bruno DeConti: I would say that this cultural exchange is absolutely crucial to reduce the negative effects of attitudes as deplorable as those of these figures who, regrettably, reached a position of importance on the national scene – which makes it easier for these barbarities to echo. There is a concept formulated by the Italian sociologist Pietro Basso that applies like a glove to what we are seeing in Brazil today, which is “state racism”. A racism built from above and which, unfortunately, has heavy consequences for the Chinese who live in Brazil and for relations between the two countries.

In relation to these subjects that you mentioned in the question, I don't see a solution, as their statements are the result of ignorance, but not only that. They are also the result of bad faith. Of a government strategy. The current government tries to maintain popularity through a set of harmful attitudes, including spreading racism in the country. But, in relation to the vast majority of the Brazilian population, I am convinced that greater knowledge of China and Chinese culture can go a long way in reducing misunderstandings; in consolidating this friendly relationship to which you refer.

I have no doubt that intercultural dialogue brings people together. Globalization brings a set of problems to the world, especially for peripheral countries, such as Brazil. But it is undeniable that there are also positive aspects. And one of the main ones is precisely the possibility that we have today – more than at any other time in history – of getting to know other cultures and learning from them. Unfortunately, the power relations, which I discussed just now, create obstacles to this process, but it is precisely these obstacles that we must fight against.

China has an ancient culture. Like Brazil, it is a continental country and very diverse from ethnic, religious and, of course, cultural points of view. It therefore has the most varied cultural and artistic expressions. And beautiful! When interacting with Chinese culture, it is clear that each of us will have our own preferences, it may be that some do not like one thing or another, as is the case with the cultural manifestations of any other country. But you need to know them. It is not possible that, in the 21st century and with all the technological facilities that surround us, that we are still hostages to McCarthyism of the worst kind; of a constructed obscurantism. We need to fight against this hierarchy of cultures.

Now returning to the question, I see that the Brazilian people are very interested in Chinese culture. And I am convinced that a greater knowledge of this culture – combined, of course, with a greater knowledge of Brazilian culture by the Chinese – will strengthen friendship between peoples. In order not to generate any misunderstanding, it is only necessary to highlight that this friendly relationship between Brazilians and Chinese tends to be the rule. The execrable attitudes of members of the current government are the exception. But, precisely, a greater knowledge of Chinese culture and the Chinese people on the part of the Brazilian population will make it more immune to the current government's attempts to create this schism between the peoples.