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Anne Sytske Keijser: Why did the Dutch Translation of Dream of the Red Chamber Take 13 Years?
De Yongjian, China News Services
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Anne Sytske Keijser: Why did the Dutch Translation of Dream of the Red Chamber Take 13 Years?

Interview with Dutch translator Anne Sytske Keijser
 

In November 2021, the full Dutch translation of Dream of the Red Chamber (120 chapters) was published. This masterpiece of Chinese literature is finally available in a Dutch translation that matches its status.

Three Dutch translators, Anne Sytske Keijser, Silvia Marijnissen, and Mark Leenhouts, worked on this translation for 13 years, and the final translation, bound in four volumes, is 2,160 pages long.

The translation has attracted the attention of Dutch academia and the media, with many Dutch media publishing reports or writing reviews of the book. Recently, in an exclusive interview with East Meets West of the China News Services (CNS) at Leiden University, where Anne Sytske Keijser teaches, she explained the 13-year process of translation and even the significance of the full Dutch translation of Dream of the Red Chamber in spreading Chinese culture to the Dutch public, especially young people.

The covers of the four volumes of the full Dutch translation of Dream of the Red Chamber.

Photo by Keijser, China News Services

The summary of the interview is as follows:

CNS: The outside world may be curious about why it took 13 years to complete the translation. What was the most challenging part of the translation? And what was the most interesting part?

Keijser: In fact, we have not been working on the translation of Dream of the Red Chamber full-time for 13 years, as we all have our own jobs. I am a teacher at Leiden University in the Netherlands, and Silvia Marijnissen and Mark Leenhouts have not only translated Dream of the Red Chamber, but also many other works over the years.

The translation took so long because first we had to find a way to translate the tone of Dream of the Red Chamber into Dutch appropriately. Dream of the Red Chamber has a lot of dialogues, which are very interesting and engaging, and there are very fine things in it from which you can get a feeling for the characters. So, sometimes the meaning might have been translated, but it always felt like something was missing, and it was not vivid enough, not lifelike enough, because the tone was not translated appropriately.

An example is the Chinese word 'nin' ('您', as 'you' in an honorific sense in English). In Dutch, there is also the word like 'nin', but it only means 'respect', not 'distance' between people. In Dream of the Red Chamber, the tone of the word 'nin' changes a lot. It is logical to say that Xiren, as Jia Baoyu's maid, should use 'nin' to address him, but given her close relationship with him, she would never use 'nin' to address him. However, she would definitely use 'nin' (as your ladyship) to address Wang Xifeng. These require us to carefully distinguish the relationships between the characters to translate the different tones well.

    Translating Dream of the Red Chamber also involved understanding a lot of cultural backgrounds, a process that exposed us to various aspects of traditional Chinese culture and was particularly rewarding. For example, when the book mentioned Chinese medicine, we had to read books on Chinese medicine to understand what these herbs actually referred to and why Jia Baoyu said that certain medicines should not be given to girls but given to boys; after we translated the content related to the Grand View Garden, we learned a lot of interesting things about Chinese architecture; with this knowledge, we visited the Chinese garden near Groningen (a city in the north of the Netherlands) and found the garden design very fascinating.

The Grand View Garden in Beijing, the filming location of the TV series Dream of the Red Chamber.  Photo by Cao Mu, China News Services

In addition, there are some things in Dream of the Red Chamber that the Dutch language doesn't have words for, so we had to 'invent' some words when we translated them. For example, there is no Dutch word for 'kang' ('炕', bed-stove), so there is no way to translate it. We felt that the Dutch language should accept this word, so we just annotated it when it first appeared in the book, and then transliterated it directly as 'kang'.

  As for the names of the characters in the book, the names of the masters were not translated into Dutch, and the names of the servants were translated into Dutch. One of the most difficult names was 'Xiren' (袭人), which took us three years to work out; it had to be made into a beautiful and attractive name in Dutch, and it had to sound good when spoken. Sometimes one of us thought it was OK, but the other two did not, and only when all three of us agreed could it be put in the book.

CNS: After the publication of the full Dutch translation, a book review in the Dutch media stated that "Dream of the Red Chamber is a literary masterpiece of both beauty and depth". There is also the study of Dream of the Red Chamber called "Redology" in China, but you and the other two translators have repeatedly said that the target audience for the full Dutch translation is the general public. How does this balance the 'depth' of Dream of the Red Chamber with the 'accessibility' of the translation for the general reader?

Keijser: That's a good question. We have also considered this issue and have finally made a 'trade-off'. For example, there are many names in Dream of the Red Chamber, so we made a character relationship chart at the back of each volume, with all the names on it, so you can turn to the back at any time when reading.

But because this translation is for the general reader, we decided not to add too many footnotes, although the translation would lose something. The names in Dream of the Red Chamber have many meanings, and footnotes could certainly be added. However, when you read Dream of the Red Chamber and are immersed in its world, I feel you are less concerned with the meaning behind the names, but you are bursting with impatience to find out what happens next.

Also, the verses in Dream of the Red Chamber have many meanings and literary allusions; a particular line may be closely related to Li Bai or Du Fu, and we can add footnotes to these lines. But for a poem of 10 or 12 lines, we can't add five footnotes to just one line, because it would affect the fluency of the reading too much.

Dutch readers are not the same as Chinese readers. Dream of the Red Chamber is a masterpiece of Chinese literature, and many Chinese have known it since they were children and have seen the TV series Dream of the Red Chamber. However, there is no such tradition in the Netherlands, and readers don't know about Dream of the Red Chamber. So our first step was to turn it into Dutch for the general reader, and then organise events, such as lectures, to explore the 'depth' of Dream of the Red Chamber.

A clay sculpture of Reading the Romance of the Western Chamber and a porcelain sculpture of Daiyu Burying Fallen Flowers. Photo by Xu Jianmei, China News Services

 

CNS: The full Dutch translation has been released for a few months, and how do you feel about it? What has been the response from readers?

Keijser: I am quite surprised. The response to the translation has been better than I expected, and readers have enjoyed it. The first print was sold out, and the publisher is organising another print.

For Dutch readers, reading Dream of the Red Chamber is like entering an entirely new world. It is a very traditional feudal society in 18th century China, and the reader may find everything strange at first and not quite understand what the characters are doing, but usually after 100 or 150 pages, he or she will be completely absorbed into the world of Dream of the Red Chamber and become so fascinated by the characters that he or she can't stop reading the whole book.

Some readers have left messages on my Twitter account telling me that they have just finished reading Dream of the Red Chamber and are now officially 'saying goodbye' to it. The director of the public library in North Brabant (the southern province of the Netherlands) is particularly fond of the book and plans to organise a series of events to give readers an insight into the background of Dream of the Red Chamber. Having previously read the Dutch translation of Zhuangzi, other readers read Dream of the Red Chamber and associated it with some of the details in Zhuangzi. This was interesting. They read Zhuangzi first and then Dream of the Red Chamber, and could be said to have gained an understanding of traditional Chinese culture.

The inner pages of the full Dutch translation of Dream of the Red Chamber.

Photo by Keijser, China News Services

 

CNS: As a literary masterpiece, Dream of the Red Chamber can be considered a window into Chinese culture. What do you think a full Dutch translation will do to spread Chinese culture to the Dutch public, especially young people?

Keijser: It can do a lot of good. The general Dutch people don't know much about traditional Chinese culture, but reading Dream of the Red Chamber can give them much resonance. For example, in the book, the girl who lived in the Grand View Garden knew that the good life would end soon, because she would get married, did not know what would happen afterwards, and her fate might be miserable. This feeling of being confused and anxious about the unpredictable life and future is something that young people can identify with in particular.

And then there is Jia Baoyu, of whom his family had great expectations. I remember when I first read Dream of the Red Chamber in my early twenties, I felt particularly empathetic towards Jia Baoyu when I thought of the pressures that life brought and the feeling of not being able to grasp the future. Then, of course, there are the romantic episodes in the book, such as the pair who was hoped to have been together, but for various reasons, everything fell through, making readers feel they were wonderfully written.

After starting to translate Dream of the Red Chamber, I gave a course on the social background of Dream of the Red Chamber at the School of Chinese Studies, Leiden University. Some students were interested in the relationship between Dream of the Red Chamber and Buddhism and Taoism, others analysed Wang Xifeng's position in the Rong Guo Mansion, others were interested in the status of women in the book, and others analysed the Qing Dynasty laws involved in the book because they were also studying law.

Also, the descriptions of daily life in Dream of the Red Chamber are so realistic that Dutch readers can learn about the life of the Chinese aristocracy through the details in the book. For example, after reading Dream of the Red Chamber, one reader felt it was "unbelievable", telling me that although the people in the book felt very lonely, they were surrounded by servants, who served them to dress, eat, and even have tea. Therefore, there must have been many people in the house. This is a perspective that I have never thought of.

An English version of the opera Dream of the Red Chamber at the War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco, USA. Photo by Liu Dan, China News Services

 

CNS: On an academic level, what significance does the full Dutch translation have for the Dutch translation circle and even for Sinology?

Keijser: I think one of the contributions of this book is to show that it is possible to translate such a masterpiece as Dream of the Red Chamber, because sometimes, in the Dutch translation circle, there is a saying that "so-and-so books cannot be translated".

For the three of us, we discussed whether the book should be given to one person, but then we decided that it was so complex that one person might collapse, and that two or three people would be fine, but four was too many. We all have our strengths: Marijnissen is good at translating poetry, Leenhouts has translated challenging works of literature such as Fortress Besieged, and I am good at studying traditional Chinese culture and Chinese history and have a good understanding of classical Chinese. So the three of us started to work together. Now the full translation of Dream of the Red Chamber is available in Dutch, and there are still many other great works of Chinese literature and even world literature to be translated into Dutch, so we will keep working hard.

Participants performed the classic scene from Dream of the Red Chamber - Daiyu Burying Fallen Flowers at the ninth "Chinese Bridge" Chinese Proficiency Competition for Foreign College Students in 2010. Photo by Fu Yu, China News Services

From a literary point of view, the full Dutch translation can also play a role in promoting the diversification of world literature. After reading Dream of the Red Chamber, Dutch readers may be interested in other Chinese literary works and be willing to read them in Dutch, which would be a very good phenomenon. There is also the TV series Dream of the Red Chamber, and if we can see such a TV series in the Netherlands, I believe many people will watch it and then perhaps read Dream of the Red Chamber.

Overall, I think it is well worthwhile to learn about another culture and another world through literature. I often say in my classes that many students do not necessarily like Chinese literature, just as many Dutch students are not interested in Dutch literature either. I hope that my course will foster their curiosity about Chinese literature so that in the future, they will be able to take this "curiosity" and work as translators or in the diplomatic service or cultural institutions, doing something to promote cultural exchange and mutual appreciation between Chinese and Western cultures.

 

Profile of the Interviewee:

Anne Sytske Keijser, a Dutch translator, currently teaches at the School of Chinese Studies at Leiden University in the Netherlands, and she studied at Leiden University and Xiamen University in the 1980s. She has translated works by Chinese authors such as Nie Hualing, Zhang Xianliang, Ye Zhaoyan, Su Tong, Bi Feiyu, Bai Xianyong, and Zhou Zuoren, as well as classical Chinese literature; she teaches modern Chinese, ancient Chinese, and Chinese literature at the School of Chinese Studies, Leiden University.

 

Editor: Su Yiyu

 

De Yongjian, China News ServicesKailun Sui

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