Translation - Comments Welcome.

[roddy]

This is a translation I did of an article from the Southern Weekend newspaper last weekend I do these occassionally when I see something that's interesting. A few of the previous ones I've done are at my old site. I'll paste this one here to see if anyone can suggest any improvements.

The original Chinese article is here. The bits I've marked as quotes were similarly marked in the newspaper, it's not so clear in the online version. I've bolded some bits I'm not sure about, and any and all comments will be gratefully recieved (unless you say it's rubbish, in which case I'll ignore them)

I know there are some parts that are wrong - I didn't bother looking up characters in names of people or places, I just guessed and I didn't bother working out how many 里 to a kilometer. I'll be more carefull when people start paying me for it (although if I'm not careful, nobody will . . .)

Roddy

Shang Lifu's photography exhibition at Beijing universities finished at the end of last year. I say photography exhibition - just some (无非?)very average photographs, taken on a bottom of the range Seagull camera, hung on the walls outside the campus .

26 this year, Shang Lifu was born in born in Gansu, a peasant child. Last year he graduated from the Chinese Department of North-Western Normal University.

A few students, particularly the girls, who saw the exhibition at Beijing University just wrote this in his visitors book: 'I want to cry'. Someone from Gansu told him he was all too familiar with the content of the photos, yet cried anyway.

In the last two months of 2003, Shang Lifu carried his crude photographs around several of Beijing's top universities. Sometimes Beijing's winds forced him to stop for a day or two, and he used the free time to travel around the city visiting education experts.

"I didn't come here looking for sympathy. I want to think about the problem with these people, find a way to to get education in China's west out of it's current state. I think there must be a way."

From throwing off confusion and finding direction.

People who question themselves never live easy. Shang Lifu is one of these people. His first trip through the west, when he was 19, had no aim. He just wanted to travel and find himself.

I felt aimless right from my first year of university. Other students loved to talk enthusiastically about their ambitions but it was a difficult time for me. I studied Chinese, beautiful things, but not real. I just thought everyday. If I wasn't reading I was staring into space.

I decided to take a trip, go to the villages and have a look. I'm a peasant, but ever since I can remember my family has lived on the outskirts of the city. I just wanted to go and see for myself, just hoped to find some direction. In the summer of 1998 I started my first journey through the west, from Gansu's Hexi to Qinghai.

The desolation and poverty shocked him, even though this was were he was from. Never-ending cliffs and mountains, yellow earth to make you cry. He started to wonder, the west flourished in the past, why has it become so bleak now.

When I reached Xining that bitter summer, my month-long first journey ended. I splashed out and spent 6Y on a room in a guesthouse. I went to the washroom to shower and as I undressed everyone around me started to leave. Soon only I was left. As soon as I stepped under the water layer after layer of skin washed off and I realised why they'd left. Four or five layers of that skin floating in the water like scum in a pot. I stuck it all together in front of me. Maybe it was a gift from my journey.

Tomorrow, what would I do tomorrow, I had no idea. Emptiness and lonliness returned.

In the winter holiday of 1999, with 3.10Y in his pocket, Shang Lifu rode his bike out of the school gate once more. This time he had more luggage though - a calligraphy brush and a pair of scissors. He bartered calligraphy and paper-cuts for bed and board, and travelled for 23 days.

I didn't find anything that made me feel better. I felt very lost, not sure of what my purpose was. When that second journey ended I realised I hadn't really done anything, nor helped people understand our society better. As a student at a teaching university, I knew the value of education, even more so after my two journeys. I wanted to know why there was such a gap between education on the eastern coast and in the west. Perhaps an even longer journey would bring me answers.

In June 1996 he started 3 months of work at a quarry, where he earned 3000Y to travel and compare education in the east and west. On the ninth day of 1999's ninth month, he got on his bike and went east.

In three trips, Shang Lifu visited 16 provinces and municipalities, 64 cities and 110 counties, travelled thirty thousand kilometers and visited over 100 schools.

My sense of purpose got gradually clearer as I travelled. Thinking about it, I realised the education methods on the eastern and southern coasts could only partially solve the problems in the west, they couldn't solve the fundamental problems. So I set off a fourth time, to visit Gansu, Ningxia, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Qinghai, Tibet, Sichuan, Chongqing and Guizhou to see what rural education there was like.

Starting in March 2002, over almost a year, Shang Lifu cycled through 60 counties and visited over 100 schools, travellling 60 thousand more kilometers. Of all his trips, this was the one with the clearest aim.

His heart and mind got clearer on the road, and he started to find his own direction in life, a solemn but fulfilling destiny.

Just what is the right kind of education for the west?

Shang Lifu says his journeys have him more than enough to think about, especially when he faced the children's hungry eyes. 'There wasn't one time I didn't cry'.

There's a girl in Ningxia called Ma Dongfeng. When I got to her house she was getting ready to make dinner. This 12 year old girl had been making dinner for 4 years. Watching her rushing about in her apron really moved me. There were four kids, she's the third. Her eldest brother never finished elementary school, but to help pay fees for the younger ones he left the village to work, and when the school year starts the whole family wait for him to come back. It's been two years, but the family can never pay the school fees, less than 100Y, on time.

It's very late in the evening before she can do her homework. The light cast her flickering shadow huge on the wall. Heartbreaking.

In the west, it's not just the pupils who are poor - it's the teachers too. The teachers employed by the community, the supply teachers - almost all of them are working without pay, year after year.

In Tingchuan, Shanxi, there's an elementary school in Si Village. I know one of the teachers who has taught there for 17 years. Her salary's been raised to over 100Y a month, but every time she should get her salary, all she can do is take a note of it in a creased old notebook. She's owed about 17,000Y, and she's still teaching.

In the villages in the west, many people told Shang Lifu of their troubles, and that the government should invest more in education. Money's important, but is education only a question of money? Shang Lifu has thought it over and over on his travels.

Huining in Gansu gave me a lot to think about. 500 people from that remote, poor area have got Masters degree's or PhD's. I visited a rundown village where one family couldn't keep warm or eat well, yet they had two children with Master's degrees. 70% of the people there have never seen a train or a computer, but they've seen PhD's.

There's an elementary school in Inner Mongolia with excellent facilities. I found the overhead projector and tape recorder in all the rooms were wasted though, some of them still wrapped up in plastic. The teachers said they weren't used to using them, couldn't use them.

The really worrying thing isn't the money - it's more important to have a realistic view of education.

Shang Lifu realised that education in the west is unvaried - learn to read books and recognise characters - and is little use for the development of the villages. There's a huge gap between the schools and the villages. Teachers and students sometimes feel there's too much distance between what they study and their lives.

In a Tibetan area of Qinghai, the head of a middle school told me what he really thought. He said that he and the school had no idea of what they should be educating the students to be. As soon as the students fail to get into Senior Middle school, what are you going to tell them to do? There's not even one vocational school in the entire county.

He said 'The aim of our education is to produce people with decent knowledge, good workers. Students who graduate now don't have much knowledge or many useful skills, and that's where we are failing.'

Current rural education produces a minority of students who go to university, but the vast majority don't. However, rural education uses the same methods you get in the cities, where students are aiming at higher education. This just discourages parents from sending their sons and daughters to school. 'Studying is useless' they often say.

We're paying attention to a small part, but overlooking most. Put it this way - who's going to help develop their own villages? Is it those who get into university?

In Qinghai, most of the herdsmen's children who are in school were forced there. If a village has 10 children who should start school, they'll draw lots to see who has to go. Some parents prefer to pay fines than send their kids to school. They don't see any hope in education, the children won't learn any practical skills. People who go to study and return are called useless.

We should use the schools to teach children real practical skills as well as book-learning. Then, if they lose the chance to study, they can use that knowledge and those skills.

The well-known education scholar Tao Xingzhi once said urgently: 'China's rural education is on the wrong road! It's teaching people to leave the villages for the cities, to eat without planting food, to wear clothes without planting cotton, to build houses without planting forests. It's making them soft, teaching them to look down on agricultural work, to take a share without contributing, turning the sons of workers into bookworms. What should we do? Make rural education meet the real needs of rural life, that's what '

I think the development of China's rural education needs to listen to Tao Xingzhi's words. I'm just an observer, a provider of case studies. I hope more people will learn about the west and it's education, not just look at it from the same old angle.

A lonely destiny.

Graduated last year, Shang Lifu should be a leader's secretary in a Gansu bank now. But he couldn't bear his brief 'high class' life. "Sometimes we spent enough on one meal to send several kids to school. I can't help thinking like that, the memories of what I've seen are too deep. It made me desperately unhappy. "

Shang Lifu left the bank in the end, and became unemployed. Now he lives in a Beijing basement and goes without food some days. He runs around Beijing asking those who can help to do so.

He planned to go back after his exhibitions, but he got stuck in Beijing. He's managed to get some things done here - 280 of the children unable to go to school that he met on his travels are getting help from teachers and students from Beijing universities. When students as directionless as he once was asked him 'What can we do to help' he organised a group of 100 volunteers, and next July they'll go west to carry out a large-scale survey of what needs to be done. - "See what's lacking, and what society can do to provide it".

These 100 people are currently on campus training both their bodies and their skills for this task, while Shang Lifu and some education experts are looking for the money. They still haven't found the 150,000Y sponsorship they need.

Shang Lifu says he hopes to persuade some people or organisations to build vocational schools and teacher-training schools in the future.

In the last 6 years of drifting, Shang Lifu has always travelled alone. He's chosen a lonely task. 'When I was on the road and I couldn't bear it any more, I'd shout my name at the mountains until I was hoarse. Then I found solitude needs a kind of bravery, or a kind of beauty, a beauty that comes from great freedom. "

Shang Lifu supports himself by writing articles for a newspaper. Who knows how long he and his dreams will last. [/b]

[confucius]

Great job, Roddy! This kind of news story seldom gets translated into Western media. I'm very familiar with that area of Gansu province and appreciate Shang Lifu's feelings, which you have interpreted so well.

[trooper]

Looks a very decent translation, roddy. I learnt a few things about Chinese from it! I've only properly read the first half of the Chinese because I'm a very slow reader though.

I think you can make improvements in some places by pushing the English harder to capture more closely the feel implied by the Chinese. By allowing the English to follow the Chinese less literally, you, paradoxically, capture more closely the flow of the original.

I think Chinese can be terse and jagged. Somehow this works and sounds right! But for some reason English doesn't work as effectively the same way and can seem disjointed where the Chinese is smooth and elegant. Perhaps you could expand your translation in certain parts to give it more of a feeling of smoothness and polish.

[holyman]

couldnt bother to finish the whole thing but a standard 'li' is half a kilometer(after 1949, before that its different almost every dynasty). 2 li's makes a kilometer.

[roddy]

Confucius: Thankyou, even if your avatar does make me dizzy.

Trooper: Which places? Can you be specific?

Holyman: I used to know that, must have forgotten it.

Anyone else: What do you reckon?

Roddy

[trooper]

Roddy, I didn't mean to sound negative. I had a go at the translation myself for practice but only got halfway. I was going to post up many suggestions to provoke a detailed discussion/rebuttal from you and the others! But it was late, so I got tired and stopped.

I'll do some later on if you like.

[roddy]

Oh, I didn't think you sounded negative. I did think when I was posting it up it was a bit too long - any discussion would get WAY too long. Why not post up a few paragraphs worth and we'll take it from there. I think we'll be discussing English stylistics as much as Chinese language, but hey . . .

Roddy

[cuthbert]

graduated from the Chinese Department of North-Western Normal University.

it is china north-western normal university.

the article is too long,i have no patience about it.

[trooper]

Okay. Here are some suggestions of mine for the first part. Feel free to agree or disagree with me!

尚立富在去年年末的时候，结束了他在北京高校的影展。说是影展，无非是在校园的路边挂几天，图片极其普通，是用一部最简单的海鸥相机拍摄而成的。

Roddy:

Shang Lifu's photography exhibition at Beijing universities finished at the end of last year. I say photography exhibition - just some very average photographs, taken on a bottom of the range Seagull camera, hung on the walls outside the campus .

Your translation, "some very average photographs," suggests the photos were of mediocre quality. This can't be what the article is suggesting because a bit later on, we find that these photos had a powerful emotional effect on people! Also, I’d expand "I say photography exhibition – just some…" into a full sentence to make clearer the implication that on the surface this was a ramshackle exhibition. Finally, the exhibition was not put on outside campuses, but along the roads and pathways I presume. I suggest a translation like:

It was called a photography exhibition, but it was really no more than a collection of photos of very ordinary subjects taken with a bottom of the range Seagull camera and hung up around campuses for a few days.

But I’m not totally happy with this either because the sentence seems too wordy.

今年26岁的尚立富出生于甘肃省景泰县，一个农村孩子。去年毕业于西北师范大学中文系。

Roddy:

26 this year, Shang Lifu was born in born in Gansu, a peasant child. Last year he graduated from the Chinese Department of North-Western Normal University.

I think you shouldn't repeat "Shang Lifu" all the way through the article. In an English article, I’d expect to see someone’s full name only once or twice and then to see his/her surname from then on. You wouldn't expect a newspaper article to keep saying "Tony Blair, Tony Blair, Tony Blair" all the way through would you? Eventually the article would just say "Blair".

I’m not sure you’d often see a phrase like "born a peasant child" (although it’s perfectly valid) in English. Would you see a phrase like "born a working-class/middle-class child"? I think you’d more likely see something like "born into a working-class family", "born to working-class parents" or similar.

在北京大学展览时，一些学生，特别是女孩子，在留言本上只写下“想哭”两个字。一位甘肃老乡对尚立富说，照片上的这些东西太熟悉了，可居然还是流了泪。.

Roddy:

A few students, particularly the girls, who saw the exhibition at Beijing University just wrote this in his visitors book: 'I want to cry'. Someone from Gansu told him he was all too familiar with the content of the photos, yet cried anyway.

The way the article is written seems to suggest that the person from Gansu thought the content of the photos to be too commonplace and ordinary to be worthy subject matter for an exhibition, but they still made him cry. "All too familiar" is the literal translation into but I think this is misleading. You used the phrase "cried" but I think you should use the word "tears" in your translation, i.e. use a different phrase such as "was reduced to tears" or something like that. This is because a couple of paragraphs later, Shang says of his work, "我不是来收获眼泪的." Reading this, the reader will immediately get taken back to the image of the Gansu native shedding tears over Shang’s photos. I think this is the intention of the writer of the article!

2003年最后的两个月，尚立富驮着他制作简陋的图片奔走在北京的几十所院校之间。有时候北京的大风让他不得不停下来两天，这个空闲，他就在京城四处打听拜访一些教育学者。

Roddy:

In the last two months of 2003, Shang Lifu carried his crude photographs around several of Beijing's top universities. Sometimes Beijing's winds forced him to stop for a day or two, and he used the free time to travel around the city visiting education experts.

I don’t think the paragraph says or hints that he went to "top" universities.

"我不是来收获眼泪的。我希望和很多人一起思考和寻找西部农村教育在现实背景下的出路。我想，这条路是有的。"

Roddy:

"I didn't come here looking for sympathy. I want to think about the problem with these people, find a way to to get education in China's west out of it's current state. I think there must be a way."

I think you should re-translate the first line and use the word "tears" as this word immediately takes the reader back to the person from Gansu and also the girl students at the universities being moved to tears at his exhibitions. Using "sympathy" weakens the connection with the earlier paragraph. Also I think you should have "and" after "these people". The sentence seems too fragmented (and is actually grammatically wrong in English) otherwise.

[roddy]

Excellent, thanks for that . . .

I took 图片极其普通 to mean that the quality of the photography was very average - does it mean what's in the photograph?

You're right about the repitition of Shang Lifu - I should have replaced it with 'he'.

Do you think I should replace 'peasant' with 'working-class'? or just rephrase it to 'born to peasant parents'?

I think I'd still use 'all too familiar' here, seems right to me - I don't get the sense of not being worthy for an exhibition. Should have used tears, you're right.

I should just cut top - I think the article uses 高校 earlier, that was probably why I used it.

I thought long and hard about translating the bit about 'collecting tears'. I think it's a really powerful phrase, but I thought it might stand out a bit too much in English and draw too much attention to the writing, not the facts. However, it does seem like a really good idea to change it so it can tie in with the earlier 'tears'.

Did you think 很多人 referred to the people in Gansu? I thought he meant the education experts, which is why I used with, not and.

Many thanks

Roddy

[trooper]

I think you are right to use "peasant". I think Shang felt he had lost his peasant roots and so tried to rediscover them by going deep into the country himself.

From the context (Shang in Beijing between exhibitions) "很多人" seems to mean the experts in Beijing, not the people of Gansu. You are right again.

[roddy]

I thought long and hard about translating the bit about 'collecting tears'. I think it's a really powerful phrase' date=' but I thought it might stand out a bit too much in English and draw too much attention to the writing, not the facts. However, it does seem like a really good idea to change it so it can tie in with the earlier 'tears'.

[/quote']

I've just been told that the 'collecting tears' bit stands out in the Chinese as well, so I'd definitely translate it as that, rather than looking for sympathy now - if it stands out in the original, it should stand out in the translation.

Roddy

[Guest ourfootprints]

I was tearful when going through the story. Born to middle-class parents in East China, I've travelled to north and south, but never west. The story makes me thinking of "go west".

As for translation, Roddy did a good job, yet hopes somes tips from a Chinese native speaker help.

西部的荒凉和贫困震撼了尚立富，尽管他也是西部人。翻不完的大山，看了叫人想流泪的黄土，一望无垠的戈壁，他开始思索：曾经一度辉煌的西部，为什么被如今的满目苍凉所替代？

The desolation and poverty shocked him, even though this was were he was from. Never-ending cliffs and mountains, yellow earth to make you cry. He started to wonder, the west flourished in the past, why has it become so bleak now.

一望无垠的戈壁 means :boundless Gebi (the well-known desert)

1999年6月，为了比较考察西部教育与东南沿海的教育状况，尚立富靠给一家石粉厂搬运石膏粉和装火车皮的方式打工，苦干3个月换来了两千元钱。1999年9月9日，他骑自行车开始了自己的东部之行。

In June 1996 he started 3 months of work at a quarry, where he earned 3000Y to travel and compare education in the east and west. On the ninth day of 1999's ninth month, he got on his bike and went east.

He worked for a gesso factory as a gesso loader.

尚立富说，行走给了他太多的感想，尤其是当面对着孩子们那一双双如饥似渴的眼睛，“我的心没有一次不在流泪。”

Shang Lifu says his journeys have him more than enough to think about, especially when he faced the children's hungry eyes. 'There wasn't one time I didn't cry'.

Here he cries without tears, but means his heart weeps.

我们只注重了一小部分，却忽视了一大部分。话又说回来，建设自己家乡的人又是谁，是那些考上大学的人才吗？

We're paying attention to a small part, but overlooking most. Put it this way - who's going to help develop their own villages? Is it those who get into university?

here 话又说回来 in the context means ironically or sarcastically.

从6年前出行到如今的漂泊，尚立富一直是独行，他选择了一个注定孤独的事业。“刚开始一个人在路上时，我忍受不了就朝着大山喊自己的名字，直到自己的嗓子喊哑。后来我发现孤独需要一种勇气，更是一种美，是一种旷世的浩瀚之美。”

In the last 6 years of drifting, Shang Lifu has always travelled alone. He's chosen a lonely task. 'When I was on the road and I couldn't bear it any more, I'd shout my name at the mountains until I was hoarse. Then I found solitude needs a kind of bravery, or a kind of beauty, a beauty that comes from great freedom. "

更是一种美 means : moreover/much more, to be solitude IS a kind of beauty.

P.S.,有个宁夏的女孩叫马冬艳。

There's a girl in Ningxia called Ma Dongfeng.

Ma Dongfeng should be Ma Dongyan

Aha, my terrible English stops me from giving out more suggestions. Am I still helpful?

[cometrue]

great job! and about a sentence i have different opinion:

真的恐怕不是钱这么简单的问题，更重要的或许是种对教育的虔诚。

The really worrying thing isn't the money - it's more important to have a realistic view of education.

The really worrying thing isn't the money - it's more important to have the devotion to the cause of education

or maybe a passion for education?

be loyal to the cause of education?