Translation/ Cross-Cultural/Diasporic Study
Dream of the red chamber and Sing song girls are often noted by Eileen Chang as two major resources of her literary inspiration. She devoted most of her time in American to translate the Sing song girls into English and do research on Dream of the red chamber. Before completing the English version of Sing song girls, Chang translated the novel’s Wu-dialect parts into Mandarin Chinese with extensive annotations. In the letter from Eileen Chang to C.T. Hsia 1968, Chang mentions some Suzhou dialects from Sing song girls and discusses her understanding with C.T Hsia. Chang sees her role in the translation of this classic novel as the transmitter, not creator. Her mission working on this project was transmitting what was passed on to her rather than creating something new, but her distinct annotation opens up a new route between the traditional and the modern concepts of literature and literary creation.
There are two values stemming from the Sing song girls inspiring her translation process. Firstly, the the state of yijing 意境 (feeling-scene) is what she conveys most. Chang values the author’s ability to convey the evocation of feelings through depictions of images and scenes. In other words, she finds out a lyrical quality in narration of the novel is often associated with classical Chinese poetry. It is the unique characteristics of Chinese classical literature. Secondly, the depiction of sentiment qing (情) is another value Chang advocate most in her translation. Although Sing song girls tell stories about life in courtesan houses in late Qing, the romantic love happened between the courtesans and their clients is rarely seen in the Chinese classic literature. Chang observes ‘ Sing song girls’s main subject matter is actually the Eden of the forbidden fruit. In this way, it fills a significant blank space in human life a hundred years ago’. In her C.T. Hsia in 1979, Chang thinks that Sing song girls treats men and women equally and it’s the unique value of this novel. From Chang’s perspective, Dream of the red chamber is the first novel about romantic love in China and Sing song girls becomes Dream of the red chamber’s late Qing successor. However, as she maintains that, ‘emotions as strong as those between Water Blossom and Jade Tao (two characters in the novel) are not something ordinary people possess’.
People may not know that Eileen was at one of the lowest points in her life when she finally set out to translate Sing song girls into English. Her previous English manuscripts had been rejected by numerous publishers and her second husband passed away shortly after she started her translation project. However, as the Chinese literature fanatic, Eileen Chang obtains the mission to introduce Chinese literature to the west. As she discusses the Western recognition of China in her speech at Radcliffe Institute in 1969, ‘ so far the western view of China is as set and restricted as the Chinese conception of the west, and in the end a limited view makes for limited interest.