On the evening of July 7, 2021, Professor Zhao Gang from the School of Foreign Languages at East China Normal University gave a lecture titled “Study of Professor Yu Sumei’s translation of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms” to CFLC faculty and students.
Prof. Zhao gave a comprehensive introduction to Prof. Yu Sumei’s translation of the classical Chinese novel, bringing the translator back to the foreground by digging into the story behind the translation, recreating the process of the translation, and elucidating the various relationships that influenced this act. He then elaborated on the characteristics of this translation that sets itself apart from the previous translations, as well as the translation strategies and methods used.
First of all, Prof. Zhao introduced the current status of the English translation and research of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, as well as the translator Prof. Yu Sumei’s life story. At present, there are three full English translations of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, namely, Romance of the Three Kingdoms by C. H. Brewitt-Taylor in 1925, Three Kingdoms: A Historical Novel by Moss Roberts in 1994, and Yu Sumei’s The Three Kingdoms in 1994, based on C. H. Brewitt-Taylor’s translation. Prof. Yu’s translation was published and distributed by Tuttle Publishing in 2014 and then republished as a bilingual edition by Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press in 2017, attracting the attention of the translation community. Prof. Yu’s translation of the masterpiece Chinese novel is noted for its faithfulness to the original work, which involve numerous characters, complex historical scenes, and countless political metaphors or allusions. Her success in translating the novel can be attributed to her profound academic attainments and rigorous scholarship.
Prof. Zhao analyzed the process of Prof. Yu’s translation, focusing on six aspects: the length of the translation, the initiation of the act of translation, the nature of the translation, the inheritance and innovation in the translation, the selection of the original text, and the acceptance of the translation.
Prof. Zhao identified three characteristics of Prof. Yu’s translation based on a textual analysis: Yu’s translation is an accurate translation based on a correct understanding of the original text, a translation that is faithful to the original work, and a dynamic translation targeting contemporary general readers, with the latter being the most prominent feature of the translation. This sets Prof. Yu’s translation from other translators. The translator adopted the strategy of dynamic translation as the target audience is the contemporary public, which is fundamentally different from Moss Roberts’ translation which was aimed at university classroom teaching and academic research. Unlike C. H. Brewitt-Taylor’s translation, which used the Wade-Giles romanization system, Prof. Yu’s translation, in order to meet the needs of modern readers, employed modern pinyin for the names of people and places, and left out the names of some people, places and official posts that did not affect the development of the plot. From the perspective of style, C. H. Brewitt-Taylor’s translation reflects the characteristics of Victorian English, with formal, elegant and academic words, even including some archaic words, and longer sentences with fewer punctuations, while Prof. Yu’s translation is based on modern English, with simple words, short sentences, and long sentences divided by punctuation marks, and is therefore more accessible.
Finally, Prof. Zhao Gang said that the translation of Chinese classics into foreign languages is an emerging topic and plays an important role in the promoting the international spread of Chinese culture and in projecting China’s soft power. With China’s robust socio-economic development, the importance of translating the canonical texts will become more and more apparent. Prof. Zhao’s study fills a gap in the previous research on Prof. Yu’s translation.
The lecture was followed by a Q&A session.
