Wen Jieruo: practice makes a good translator

Wen Jieruo talks to China.org.cn in Beijing, Dec. 5, 2012.

At her old residence in Beijing, legendary Chinese translator Wen Jierou candidly shared her lifetime career in translation on Dec.6, 2012.

"You have to have some level of genius to be a successful writer, but you don't have to have as much to be translator," said Wen Jieruo, an 85-year-old veteran translator. "Just learn more and practice more."

Wen Jieruo was born in 1927 in Guiyang, Guizhou Province, and is a well-known translator of Japanese Literature in China, and is fluent in both English and Japanese.

Wen humbly explained that she is just a normal person. She said: "So I preferred to be a translator, because I never had any of the beautiful inspirations that my husband, Xiao Qian, had."

Xiao Qian was a famous Chinese essayist, editor, journalist and translator. He died at the age of 90 in Beijing in 1999.

In 1990, Xiao Qian was invited by Nanjing Yilin Publication to translate Ulysses, by James Joyce, into Mandarin, and was assisted by his wife Wen Jieruo. When the book was released in 1994, it became a surprise best-seller in China. Because of this startling achievement, they received the Caihong Translation Prize and the Best Foreign Literature Book Award in China.

Wen Jieruo revealed that back in the 1930's, a seed was planted by her father when they stayed in Japan for two years. Her father was a diplomat and loved books. One time, she and her father saw a Japanese translation of Ulysses in a bookstore; her father pointed to the book and said: "Look, the Japanese can translate this book, which is extremely difficult to understand."

Wen graduated from Tsinghua University in 1950 with a degree in English. Wen worked at People's Literature Publishing House for many years in different positions, including editor, senior editor and translator of Japanese literature.

When speaking of why she decided to translated Ulysses with Xiao, she explained that she had just retired and had some spare time. "I was mainly an editor, I never did translation as a profession, so this was perfect for me," Wen said. "Another reason is I mainly translate Japanese books and never have chances to show off my English!"

Wen herself rendered a great number of Japanese literary works into Chinese for almost five decades, including 14 novels, 18 novellas as well as over 100 novelettes. Such outstanding Japanese writers including Yasushi Inoue, Yasunari Kawabata, Tsutomu Mizukami and Yukio Mishima became popular in China through Wen's translations.