The extraordinary story of Don Quixote’s first Mandarin translation

English? Not a word, Spanish? Less … Classic Mandarin? Excellent. Energy and enthusiasm? To spring up.

The lack of knowledge of the Spanish language – as well as any other Western language – was no obstacle for the famous Chinese lawyer. Lin Shu would engage in the monumental task of translate “The ingenious hildago Don Quixote de la Mancha” to the Chinese language.

With the help of his friend Chen Jialin, who had read an already distorted text in English and patiently told it to him in Baihua, the familiar Mandarin, Lin Shu set to work.

Etc 1922, the first Chinese translation of the work of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was born.

Locked up with his collaborator in his studio, the active septuagenarian wrote at one table while painting at another, simultaneously unleashing his two great passions.

Its objective was to make known the great works of Western literature which, until the beginning of the 20th century, were only accessible to intellectual elites knowing other languages ​​and having the possibility of traveling abroad.

Published under the title “History of the Enchanted Knight”, the book was initially a success: in less than 10 years, the publisher continued to print two more editions.

And today, in a new twist, Lin Shu’s book it has been translated into spanish and it was recently presented by the Cervantes Institute, the public body whose objective is the promotion and teaching of the Spanish language and the dissemination of the culture of Spain and Latin America.

From master and servant to teacher and disciple

Alicia Relinque, a sinologist at the University of Granada, Spain, and author of the translation, remembers being surprised when she came across Lin Shu’s text.

“What surprised me the most is that it seems so to the original Don Quixote, ”he told BBC Mundo.

“We were all hoping that it would be very different, that he would have just taken the character of Don Quixote as an excuse, that he would have used something else, like the windmills, but not that he would be so true to what the the stories are: all the little subplots of the novel, they’re all there ”.

It is in the details, the descriptions, the language, the character of the characters and their connections that the differences begin to appear, and where the Chinese idiosyncrasy is reflected.

“(In the Chinese version) Don Quixote is sometimes a ridiculous character, as in Cervantes’ book, but he is more worthy», Declares the academic.

“He is a defeated man, melancholy but not grotesque, intelligent, cultivated, generous and very attached to the past (something very revered in China) who does not know how to face the world in front of him and that is why he allows himself to be carried away by this kind of madness “.

In a way, “Lin shu is a little less cruel to Don Quixote,” Relinque recalls.

A substantial difference, perhaps derived from a translation error, lies in the connection between Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.

English translations use the word Master, that in this language can be a master but also a teacher.

“This immediately led him to the field of master disciple, something very Confucian, typical of the Chinese tradition, and thus Sancho becomes a disciple who wants to learn from his master ”(unlike the role of servant he assumes in the original version of Cervantes), underlines the translator.

Neither heal nor God

Another important difference related to a translation error is that one of the friends of the knight errant, who in the Spanish novel is a priest, in the Chinese novel becomes doctor.

“One of the English versions translates cura by to select and Lin Shu’s friend interpreted him as “someone who has healed,” then from the start they call the character “the doctor”, “said the sinologist.

“The priest’s position of moral superiority in Lin Shu’s Don Quixote is no longer moral superiority, but comes from a doctor, who is supposed to be an intellectual, more rational being.”

The rest is not so much errors as omissions (the preface disappears as well as the word God and all references to religion), subtle transformations (Rocinante turns into a fast horse), inclusions of neologisms (like the word revolution, taken from Japanese) and local comments that bring history closer to Chinese culture (women smell the lotus flower, there are popular verses – but they approach the original meaning of Cervantes’ proposal – as well as typical expressions of Chinese courtesy).

“It’s a way of taming the story that continues to be that of Don Quixote, and that allows us to understand the China of that time,” explains Relinque.

“Writing factory”

Although nowadays it may seem an aberration for a person, no matter how cultured and literate, to translate a written work into a language he does not know, this type of work was common in China by the end of the century. 19th and early 20th century.

“There were very few who could translate directly from a foreign language and then write in good Chinese,” Michael Gibbs Hill, director of Chinese studies at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, USA, told BBC Mundo. United, and author of Lin Shu, Inc .: Translation and Creation of Modern Chinese Culture (“Lin Shu, inc .: The Translation and Creation of Modern Chinese Culture”).

“For this reason, Lin Shu adopted a practice widely used by many translators of the time which was to collaborate with at least one person trained in the language in question, ”he says.

This production model has proven to be very effective.

“He ran what his colleagues and contemporaries called a ‘writing factory’, since in a period of 20 years, Lin Shu published on 180 pounds in a foreign language with 20 different collaborators ”, explains Gibbs Hill.

This means that in some years he produced up to 20 pounds. Although it is possible that he did not translate them all from scratch, but worked on drafts previously produced by his collaborators, correcting them.

Through their work, authors such as Dickens, Tolstoi o Beecher Stowe (author of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”), has passed into the hands of Chinese readers.

If some of these books are relatively faithful translations like Don Quixote, others contain more deliberate modifications.

In his popular translation of “Oliver Twitst”, by Charles Dickens, for example, Lin shu “emphasizes the part which offers a very negative image of England”, explains the researcher.

“Not because he wanted his readers to think badly about England, but because he wanted to show that literature can change society by revealing its flaws.”

“Archkeeper”

While many young intellectuals read Lin Shu’s translations, many then turned on him.

They considered him a too commercial author (he worked on publicity texts as well as literary texts), and they despised his use in the classical language in their translations.

“It was arch-conservative for young people,” says Gibbs Hill.

Critics, however, gave publicity to his translation of Don Quixote, which was widely read.

Then other translations appeared that complemented Lin Shu’s work (he only translated the first part of the two volumes Cervantes wrote) that were considered better, says Relinque, who argues that Lin Shu’s version is still very valuable.

“Although it has no comparison with the original, it seems to me that Lin shu wrote very well. I really like his style, in classical Chinese ”.

“His classical prose was very elegant,” Gibbs Hill admits.

For those interested in comparative literature, linguistics and the translation process, the work, the last of the great works Lin Shu translated before he died, “is a real treasure,” concludes Relinque.

BBC Mundo

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