读英文<<骆驼祥子>>有感
最近我有幸读到了美国1945年由Reynal & Hitchcock Inc.出版的英文版小说<<骆驼祥子>>，原著老舍，翻译者是Evan King。英文书名是<<Rickshaw Boy>>。难能可贵的是这本书的收藏者还附带了当年美国书评界对本书的评价，书评者是Henry Seidel Canby。另外这本书的插图也似乎很有意思，插图者是Cyrus Leroy Baldridge，有很多对街头，小院，人物，建筑，等的铅笔素描，让人遥想当年北京的城墙，街头，民居，儿童，少女，黄包车夫等等。
Evan King先生把祥子翻译成"Happy Boy",译者对书中人名的翻译尽量是逐字翻译，他以"祥"对应"happy"；"子"对应"boy"；女主角小福子翻译成"little lucky one"，虎妞翻译成"Tiger woman"，刘四爷翻译成"forth master liu"，等等。
象以往一样，我从读书评开始。书评者Henry Seidel Canby先生把这本书同Pearl Buck(中文名:赛珍珠，在中国生活多年，获诺贝尔文学奖，代表作<<大地 The Good Earth>>)和Emily Hahn女士的中国小说书相比，说这是一本由中国人写中国人的，完全不关西方人的书。"This is the story of Happy Boy, whose nickname is Camel. Soldiers stole his rickshaw and abused him, but he find his way back to Peking leading three camels which he sold for enough to get start again. That is why the rickshaw pullers called him Camel. Reading of this simple beginning, you would suppose that this is just another book on life in China, like Pearl Buck's or Emily Hahn's. Not at all. This is a contemporary novel by a Chinese, written, I suppose, in the new colloquial literary language. There's not a hint of West in it. If there are white people in Peking at the beginning of the revolution when the story takes place, Happy Boy never so much as notices them. This is China as the Chinese see it; and yet so intensely human are the characters, there is so much personality, and such an engrossing story, that never have I felt closer to an utterly foreign life than on finishing this book."
西方读者是怎样评价骆驼祥子这个人物呢? Henry Seidel Canby先生是这样写的:"Happy Boy came, an orphan, from the country when he was eighteen. He was big, handsome, strong, a little slow-witted. He was entirely illiterate, but the first thing one notices is that essentially, which means morally, he is a civilized man. The ethics of the great Chinese philosophers were his ethics. Somehow he had been made to believe in right actions, in the good results of good. That is why they call him Happy Boy. His life in this novel is a struggle with every kind of horrible poverty, injustice, sexual perversion, social wrong. He stays civilized, somehow, through it all."
对造成骆驼祥子悲惨命运的原因，Henry Seidel Canby先生这样写道:" when you have finished this novel you realized that the real problem of China is not politics as such, or military power, but an age-long social injustice and economic disorganization, where good and lovable man like Happy Boy, morally sound, survive only because of the remarkable character of their race. But of course, this is not even talked about in the novel, which is entirely objective. When a girl student in his rickshaw talks to Happy Boy about freedom of speech and the rights of man, it does not occur to him that such matters could be of any concern to the poor, who must first keep from starving."
西方读者把骆驼祥子叫"Happy Boy"，认为他的精神胜利法使他战胜了所有生活的磨难。那么，骆驼祥子的精神胜利法是什么呢? 是他的梦想，骆驼祥子的梦想就是拥有一辆自己的黄包车，自己作自己的老板，如果运气好，可以赚多的钱买更多的黄包车，然后租车给其他的黄包车夫。这就是这部小说从开头就写的祥子刚从农村到北京城的理想和目标。看看Henry Seidel Canby先生是怎么说的吧:"Happy Boy has one ambition, to own a rickshaw. Otherwise, he must rent one from Fourth Master Liu at the shed called Human Harmony. And in that shed, where he sleeps on straw and does everyone's work, Liu's hideous daughter, called Tiger Woman, is always trying to capture him, like some horrible spider, and suck out his virility. He saves, year after year,a dollar at a time, till he has one hundred dollars and gets his rickshaw. It is really a very noble profession, when you are your own master."
骆驼祥子这个人物，让我想起了另一个中国人耳熟能详的人物"阿Q"，"阿Q"最有名气的也是他的"精神胜利法":也就是被人欺负的时候骂一句"儿子打老子"，自己混的很背运的时候说"老子的祖上比你有钱"。以前我家里从来没有老舍先生的书，倒是有全套的鲁迅全集。对老舍先生的文章，只在学校学过"龙须沟"片断，没什么印象，好象是说解放了，北京市政府改造老北京的臭水沟的事。在美国读英文版的"骆驼祥子"，"阿Q"的光环慢慢地散去，骆驼祥子的形象渐渐地高大起来。
以前我虽然没有读过中文版的小说"骆驼祥子"，但是对骆驼祥子的故事也略知一二，主要是"骆驼祥子"被拍成了电影，那时候我因忙于学习，没有看过这部电影，只是听很多人谈论这部电影。人们津津乐道的是虎妞这个人物。记不清是谁对我说，新中国成立后，老舍先生被政府要求改写他的作品，"骆驼祥子"已经跟原先不一样了。他还煞有介事地对我说，祥子没有什么了不起，在原版小说里，祥子有钱了，当起了车行老板，也花天酒地，逛妓院。那么"骆驼祥子"这部小说的结局到底是什么样的呢? Evan King的翻译是这样的，祥子到了关着小福子的妓院，小福子病的奄奄一息，快死了。"This girl, this quiet figure lying there without complaint, was his life. She must not die. He could not let her die. Nor could he leave her here, in all the stench and rottenness of this vile hole. He had to have her: Without her he would go on stumbling blindly down the road of One Pock Li and so many others; with her at his side, they would both have a chance.
There was even in his heart the wordless hope that together they might work some harm on the things that meant to destroy them, that they might find a way to serve in the forces fighting the principle of evil that ruled under heaven.
But what should he do? In spit of the fact that Little Lucky One was of no use to them now, yet when they discovered how much he wanted her, Second Brother Chu and "White Flour Sacks"would ask him a price he might never be able to pay.
The agony of these feelings made his head wet and the palms of his hands moist. It would be better for both Little Lucky One and himself to die now than that he should go out of this hut without her.
Suddenly he knew what to do: no one could stop him!
With quick movements he lifted the frail body up, folding the sheet about it, and, crouching to get through the door, he sped as fast as he could across the clearing into the woods.
In the mild coolness of summer evening the burden in his arms stirred slightly, nestling closer to his body as he run. She was alive. He was alive. They were free. <The end>"
所以，从英文版的翻译小说来看，骆驼祥子尽管经历了种种苦难，他终于醒悟了，战胜了怯懦，到妓院抱出了比自己还要弱小，可怜的，爱着自己的小福子。祥子的心里还是充满了希望。但是小说并没有写小福子是不是活了下来，祥子的梦想有没有实现。这一切都留给了读者。如果老舍先生活在现代，一定会被要求写续集。但是据说老舍先生在文革前自杀了。
书评者Henry Seidel Canby先生对祥子的故事是这样概括的:"But his luck is not good. Poverty and Tiger Woman is too much for him. She pretends to be pregnant, so that her father will agree that they should be married. The bluff fails. And now they are living in a terrible compound, where drunken fathers sell their daughters into prostitution, and all day long and most of the night the woman work just to keep their families alive. Happy Boy is almost downed, but not quiet. The Tiger Woman dies, and after a struggle with his fears, Happy Boy rescues Little Lucky One, who loves him, from the White Houses (owned by a great philanthropist!) where she has been made a prostitute slave. She is diseased, and ill, and probably will not live, but the spirit of Happy Boy, which has made him a good man, wins over evil and misery."
书评者Henry Seidel Canby先生认为对骆驼祥子在北京拉洋车的生活遭遇的描写可以同十八世纪伟大的英国小说相提并论，"Happy Boy is one of the best of the rickshaw men. He knows how to save and use his strength. He sees all of Peking and all kinds of its people, from between his shafts. Sometimes he works for a private household, and makes friends, or is seduced and cheated by an evil wife. The great English novels of the eighteenth century made London intensely vivid in this way and Rickshaw Boy is worthy of their company".我完全同意这个观点，老舍先生的<<骆驼祥子>>让我想起狄更斯的<<Oliver Twist>>。老舍完全是象狄更斯一样的现实主义作家。
书评者Henry Seidel Canby先生是这样结束书评的:"The book haunts you. You think of it increasingly for days after you have read it. It leaves a strong and new impression in the mind. In short, this seems to be not only a very interesting, but a fine and memorable novel,significant of a new literature for China." 整篇书评，赞誉之词满溢。
"骆驼祥子"是一部不朽之作，Evan King的英文翻译"Rickshaw Boy"可以说是珠联璧合，才使西方读者如此喜爱这部小说。从很小的细节就可以看出Evan King的翻译十分出神入化。他把虎妞翻译成"Tiger Woman"，而不是"Tiger Girl",从虎妞帮助情敌小福子在自己的房间卖淫，自己收取百分之二十的卖淫收入到假装怀孕骗婚，虎妞怎么都给人一种老于世故，工于心计的成熟老女人印象，无法同"Girl"联系在一起，加上虎妞长得虎背熊腰，高大彪悍，是个恶妇形象；小福子被翻译成"Little lucky One"，而不是"Little lucky Girl"，虽然小福子非常年轻，瘦小得象一个小孩，但是小福子是穷人家的女孩，她为了两个饿得嗷嗷待哺的弟弟而自愿去卖淫，她的身上有母性的光辉，她不象是一个小女孩，完全象成年人一样负担家庭生计。所以Evan King没有把她翻译成"Little lucky Girl", 而是"Little lucky One"， 这也更附和英语口语。老舍的原作也是用当时的北京口语写作的。译者的爱恨褒抑从细节处都体现出来了。
当我读这本书的时候，我的眼泪止不住往下流，我为中国近代的，现代的千千万万的骆驼祥子，小福子流泪；我为象老舍先生这样的中国文学史上的寥若晨星般的文学大师流泪。 |
匿名
发表于 2010-6-26 18:26:53