Beyond Translation Theories:Centering On The Correspondence About Translation Issues Between Lu Xun And Qu Qiubai

From the late 1931 to 1932, Lu Xun and Qu Qiubai privately discussed the translation issue through letters, with Qu as the initiator. Later they both were publicly involved in the heated debates on translation criteria. In Part One of Chapter One, this theis analyzes the relationship between the private correspondence and the public disputes and finds that their left wing stance plays an important part in their being allied, which, however, was not the essential reason. Part Two further expatiates that the root lies in their inner thoughts by reviewing the development of their friendship.Chapter Two analyzes their discussion in detail, including both their divergence in translation and the relationship between such divergence and their proper thoughts on literary, artistic and political thoughts. One of the divergence lies in the translation criteria between “faithfulness " and “smoothness”. Qu prefers “smoothness” and regards “absolute Chinese vernacular" which could be understood by the masses as the norm. He hopes that translation could reform Chinese language by creating a new modern language which serves for the proletariat and is distinct from the“Europeanized language” serving for the ruling class and the bourgeoisie. For Qu, the final purpose is to advance the proletarian revolution. But Lu denies such possibility because he regards it as too idealistic concerning the then historical condition. Lu hopes that through what he called “rigid translation”, the vagueness of Chinese language could be transformed and the thingking mode of Chinese could thus be transformed as well. By comparison, Lu’s “rigid translation” seems to be a cultural break in that historical circumstance characterized as “from the deaf to the dumb”. In terms of the political importance, Lu’s “rigid translation” was a kind of “resistance” of the then political and cultural order as well as the then dominant valur system,forming a kind of cultural attack by “forcefully inserting” foreign cultures into China.The other divergence resides in the “target reader” which is closely related to their thoughts on the “popularization of literature and art " that they both pay close attention to. But Lu’s “rigid translation" targets for the intellectuals with higher education, revealing that literature and arts should be targeted for different people while Qu upholds that translation should serve the ordinary people which exposed his inward contradictions upon his imagination toward the proletariat and the popularization: the proletariat is both the subject and the object of the popularization movement. Likewise, his view of the position of the intellectuals reveals similarperplexity.Chapter Three tries to find out their common views and divergence in deeper thoughts by entering their inner worlds. Their primary commonness is that they both are the “real intellectuals” and the “forever revolutionary” who resist the outer“slavery” with much inner self-interrogation and thus this is a revolution outwardly and inwardly at the meantime. The fundamental difference is that Qu has a pure belief and devotes himself wholly to the revolution. Like Prometheus, he “steals fire” for the masses. However, Lu distinctly “believes” in doubts and self-doubts and therefore, he struggles with the “fire” even “burning himself”.