Translator’s Afterword for Out o
Translated from the Chinese.
I have been translating Out of the Shelter, by English writer David lodge, to Chinese for almost a year, off and on. A few days ago, I finished revising the translation manuscript and submitted it to the publisher. If everything goes smoothly, the translation should be in print soon. Below is the afterword I wrote for it. In recent years, situations in various aspects have gradually deprived me of the time and mood for original writing. Afterwords and forewords have become the only outlets where I seek to write down the unspoken words in my mind.
Every book translation project I have participated in entraps me in it for a period of time. I fall in the world of the book, meticulously experiencing the development of the plots and the emotions of the characters. This project, Out of the Shelter, took one step further, morphing me into Timothy, so that I used his eyes and brain to observe the people and world he had interacted with. I was astonished to discover that although we were several decades and thousands of miles apart, the boy from an ordinary South East London family shared plenty of life fragments with me, a post-80s who grew up in urban Tianjin. It was like showing an old film: Despite blurry distortions, the content is still there.
This book restrainedly employs some modern techniques, but it is essentially a traditional coming-of-age story. There are no intense and twisted plots; only Timothy's life, calmly narrated. I read it as if I had been listening to my memoir dictated by another me from a different time and space; I translated it as if I had been trying to record and put down what the other I had said. Communication between different times and spaces, even in the same language, always faces plenty of barriers. Sometimes I couldn't tell whether it was that I had really heard something the other I had said, or that I had imagined some scenes, or that the other I had imagined some scenes.
Under the author's pen, the grayish South East London was always shrouded in smoke, soot, and drizzle. Everything seemed narrow and shabby. The rooms of the Youngs' house were tiny (though Timothy and Kate both had their own bedroom). The coal stove never worked well in winter and having a hot-water shower in a warm bathroom was a dream beyond reach. I grew up in hutongs. My family lived on the ground floor of a two-story brick-and-wood building. I didn't have my own bedroom until I became a teenager, when that hutong area was demolished, and we moved into a relatively decent apartment building. It was also until then that I didn’t have to go to the public toilet anymore, which was a pit latrine (so calling it WC — water closet — was technically wrong). We had an oval plastic tub that just fitted the width of the stairwell, which was where the whole family had baths. Fortunately enough, my parents' danweis did provide shower, which I used from time to time. When the winter came, the faucet in the front yard would be frozen, and a straw-filled wood box installed surrounding the faucet, which was supposed to keep it warm, didn't work at all; but dad still bothered to put it on every year, as if it were some sort of ritual, a practice I never fully understood. For heating, we used cylindrical briquettes like everyone else. The stove must be extinguished and sealed overnight (otherwise you were running the risk of acute carbon monoxide poisoning), and the next morning a thin layer of frost, whose delicate form resembled napa cabbage leaves, would appear inside the window glass. The room was not just as cold as hell — it was frozen-over hell. However, every time I recollect my childhood, I find what has been lingering in my mind is the heartwarming trivia, like what Timothy felt in the morning he left for Germany: the air full of pungent sulfur smell during Spring Festival time due to firecrackers; the old man selling popsicles at the end of the hutong, who covered his ice box with a quilt; the white, fine steam diffusing out of the narrow kitchen when cooking baozis ... I feel even Kate, who claimed she couldn't "stand it" anymore and proved with firm action (migrating to the United States) that she was a woman of her words, tucked a trace of nostalgia for the time she had spent in England deeply in her heart. It can be sensed from the conversation she had with Timothy in Epilogue.
I had been doing adequately well in school and was enrolled into a good university thanks to the high quota allocated to Tianjin. After graduation, encouraged and supported by some relatives who had migrated abroad, I went to the United States to study. I managed to sail through some twists and turns, got the degree, and entered the field of international development, accidentally while consciously , first in the Philippines, and now in Italy. The place I work now is like the US Army headquarters in Heidelberg in the novel, in the sense that most of the employees are expatriates, the difference being that Americans are not the majority. Instead, the proportions of different nationalities among staff are determined by a set of highly complex and opaque rules that is constantly changing. Frequent and long-term duty travels are commonplace, and it is possible that employees are mobilized to the other end of the world without much advance notice, so one can imagine how high the personnel turnover rate is. People living in this work environment tend to show behavioral characteristics similar to Kate and her friends — the attitude of carpe diem and not making, or not daring to make, long-term plans, for the fear of getting hurt.
Because of the nature of this job, in recent years, I have been to many places where previously I didn't even dare to imagine I could've ever been, and I have come to know many people with an age similar to mine, or even younger, who have much richer life experience than I do and have been to much more places than I have. Lucky enough for me, I become a very good friend to some of them. Judging by our life stories, we have all undergone a process of coming out of the shelter, either wholeheartedly — like Kate — or semi-passively — like Timothy. There are, of course, some people who are naturally unconscious of the existence of shelters. It should be noted that in the book, it was not only Timothy and Kate who had come out of the shelter; Don, Vince, and Jinx Dobell also had, as well as Greg, Ruth, Mel, Dot, Maria ... I see these characters more or less on my friends. My traits are more like Timothy and Don, and I can feel the conspicuous changes that people whose traits are similar to Kate, Vince, and Jinx have induced in me, like opening a door that has always existed but never been approached.
The hinges rusted, so it was a bit difficult to push it open. It took some efforts, and you had to endure the raucous sound of metal friction and the irritating dust pouncing onto your face. At that time, it seemed that behind the door there was merely darkness. To turn around and walk away might be easy, but you knew you had to persist, because it had taken you a lot to reach here, and there was actually no way back. So you held your breath and cautiously stepped into the door. When your eyes had adjusted to darkness, you realized that this place was filled with scattered sparkles of shimmer. As you advanced in further, the sparkles grew larger and brighter and began connecting to each other, shattering the darkness. It was as if you had been in a cave where a violent explosion was occurring silently. The sparkles became a swamp of light, which then darted at you and devoured you. You were blinded.
The blindness just lasted a brief moment. When you regained sight, you found you hadn't been tossed to outer space. The surroundings were still the same as they had been before you opened that door, but there were some subtle differences. Some colors became more vivid, while others dimmer; some areas turned brighter, while others darker. Most of the things looked more like how they should have been, revealing more of their essence. With intense curiosity, you observed the plants and animals here, some of which were indeed what you had never seen before. You tried to talk with the people around and discovered that the language spoken in this world was not any of the language you had heard about, but a pidgin that seemed to be built on all languages. Because people had different mother tongues and communicated within different circles, their degrees of pidginization varied; but there remained very few people who still spoke completely natural languages. You built a pidgin on the languages you had mastered and fine-tuned it so that you could use it to get acquainted around. Meanwhile, you constantly absorbed new words into your vocabulary from other people's versions of pidgins. You walked and talked and observed, and a long time had passed before you realized it. You had already felt quite comfortable in this new environment. But then you saw a door not far away, which seemed to have never been approached by anyone. You went over, facing it.
There was no wind blowing, but the dust on the door instantly flew off in all directions. You saw that it was actually made of matte stainless steel, and thus would not rust. The sunlight shone on the door and reflected off its surface, etching an intertwined spectrum of splendid colors on the silver-white steel plate. A series of pictures gradually came to appearance. You recognized them: That was the original world you came from. Familiar languages, lanes, and lights. Familiar people were leading familiar lives. You remembered that you had had no idea at all there was something called pidgin in the world, and those days had been simple and full of leisure. Yet, you had been entranced by the story spread by word of mouth. You then had crossed the snowy mountains, trekked through the vast waste land, and found the rusty door. The previous simple and leisure-filling life had been barren when it had come to materials — or the very reason why it had been simple and leisure-filling was that it had been barren in materials. So you hadn't expected much. Any improvement would have been welcome and worthy of gratitude. You had stepped into this world just because you hadn't wanted to lose all the endeavors you had made in vain. There was indeed some improvement here, but it was not a world entirely above the original world; and you could tell from the pictures on the door that the original world had also improved substantially.
In the Heidelberg clique of splashy clothes and fancy cars, probably no one had read Stefan Zweig's biography of Marie Antoinette, which had been published in the 1930s and translated into English almost immediately. Therefore, they wouldn't have known the famous quote:[1]
Noch ist sie zu jung, um zu wissen, 命运给予她的全部馈赠，and that a price is always exacted for what fate bestows.
她那时候还太年轻，不知道 that life never gives anything for nothing, was man vom Schicksal empfängt, geheim ein Preis eingezeichnet ist.
She was still too young to know daß das Leben nichts umsonst gibt und allem, 早已在暗中标好了价格。
Timothy's traits made his early-warning radar always on. He always felt as if danger might not be far away and he had been walking off a cliff without knowing it at all. Perhaps this personality made him much more fortunate than once-vigorous Kate, Vince, and Greg. But why did Don's life seem unsatisfactory, too? He had a clear mind and deep insight, and he was decisive and thoughtful — and he was very likely to have read Marie Antoinette. The author set Timothy as more than ten years younger than Kate and others. Then, in the next ten years after the end of the novel, would he still enjoy a hurdle-free life? His family was consummate and his career prospects were clear and bright, so what price would he end up paying for coming out of the shelter?
During your distraction, dust had accumulated on the door again, whose appearance thus returned to the time when no one had approached it. You suddenly realized that just now you had remembered and pondered in the pidgin you had been speaking here, not in any natural language you had mastered before entering this world. The dust on the door rapidly dissipated and gathered in alternation. During dissipation, the illusory scenes of the original world reappeared on the steel plate and looked more and more seductive. Your hand was lifted and placed on the door. Your palm and fingertips felt its warmth and coldness. You didn't know if you wanted to push it open, because by far you had enjoyed this world and your current status very much; but what if a new series of thrilling experiences was waiting behind it? You were hesitating.
In addition to the text of this book — fortunately, I can be confident enough that it consists of clear, ordered phrases, otherwise it would be impossible to even begin with the translation — my communication with the other me from a different time and space contained plenty of bizarre information. It was indeed in either English or Chinese, but it was so enigmatic that sorting some clues out of it proved a tremendous challenge. I tried my best to organize and weave it into this essay. I think I need to visit Heidelberg. Maybe I could find the matte-stainless-steel door there.
I am very grateful to Ms. Zhuo Cheng of Xinxing Publishing House for trusting me and offering me this opportunity, so that I could have a glimpse of the works of David Lodge, a legendary scholar and writer, and experience a deeply touching journey in translation. Prof. Lodge is a famous word jockey in the English-speaking world and is well known for his incredible paronomasias. Out of the several books Ms. Cheng let me choose from, I chose Out of the Shelter — the one with the simplest text — because I knew my capacity was not up to furnishing translations of others that would stand the test of time. I believe the other novels published at this time would provide readers better opportunities to appreciate the charm of the works of Prof. Lodge.
I would like to dedicate this translation to all those who have tried to come out of the shelter. May new temptations constantly come to you. May you brave forward, savoring the unparalleled scenery along the rocky road.
Bin Liu
Chinese completed on August 19, 2018 at Rome
English translation completed on September 8, 2018 at Rome
