Wen Jieruo: practice makes a good translator

The accomplished lady has a long list of works to her credit, including Saint of Mt. Koya (included in the book series Selected Novels of Kyoka Izumi), Selected Novels of Ryunosuke Akutagawa, The Decay of the Angel and Ulysses.

Besides Ulysses, Wen said other works she was most satisfied with are E. M. Forster's Maurice and Yasunari Kawabata's Tokyo no Hito and Daisaku Ikeda's poetry selection.

"When you do translation, you must have a strong command of both Chinese and foreign languages. You have to practice hard and constantly increase your knowledge," she said. For example, as a Catholic, Wen said she knows the difference between "priest" and "Father," something that cannot be simply referenced in a dictionary.

Wen Jieruo just travelled to Japan for an academic seminar on Xiao Qian. This was her third visit to the country.

"People there received me warmly. They are so friendly, even though China and Japan are in a dispute over the Diaoyu Islands," Wen recalled. "When I was in Japan for the first time in the 1930s, some of them call us 'Chinamen,' but now they show us greater respect because China has grown stronger."

"China should be stable and punish all corrupt officials. When China is standing strong, no one can bully us."

Wen was also impressed by the progress of Japanese literary education. She said: "I discovered that Chinese professors are teaching Japanese literature in universities!"

Wen just received the Lifetime Achievement Award in Translation at the Second National Translation Conference in Beijing on Dec. 6, 2012.

Although she is 85, Wen Jieruo continues to work. "I just received two books from Seichou Matsumoto memorial museum in Japan and will be going to work on them over the next one or two years. I want to work another 10 to 20 years -- this is a big ambition, isn't it? But Zhou Youguang still works at the age of 107, and Yang Jiang works at the age of 101. They are my inspiration."

Editor: Shi Liwei