One of the problems of living in a foreign country for any length of time is loss of certainty in the use of one’s own native tongue. If you don’t return often for lengthy visits you start to lose vocabulary, forget idiomatic expressions, become unsure about style. I notice this most especially when translating. The automatic access to Chinese I used to take for granted is not always there. I experience the grew and loss of living in two cultures.

Xiaolong Qiu’s translations in his Treasury of Chinese Love Poems are what started me thinking about both the difficulties and the possibilities of translation, particularly Guan Daoshen’s “You and I” (1262-1319 AD). My very literal translation of the portion of the original that struck me reads; “Hold, one piece, earth, mould a you, shape a me. Us, two, together, break, use water, mix, again mould a you, shape a me. My clay, inside have you, your clay, inside have me.” Xiaolong’s translation is “Out of the same chunk of clay, shape a you, shape a me. Crush us both into clay again, mix it with water, reshape a you, reshape a me. So, I have you in my body, and you’ll have me forever in yours, too.” Xiaolong’s translation is exquisite, accurate, and yet subtly different from the original because he has had to supply links for the poem to relate to the language habits and expectations of the English reader. Cultural elements, such as the use of personal pronouns and the temporal construct of ‘forever’ that anchors the experience for Western readers are seldom found in Chinese poetry.

The act of translation, especially literary translation, is more than trying to find words or phrases that are equivalent to the original. In addition to understanding the intentions of the author and her or his ability to squeeze or entice meaning from the words, translation is an act of understanding and knowledge about two languages and two cultures. Because any work’s chains of associations are culture-linked, it is impossible to take a text written in one language and deliver it, intact and without loss, into another language. Translation is, nevertheless, a statement about the value of the literature itself, and the loss is part of the price translators pay to make a work more accessible.

Although any loss is unfortunate, the changes that literature undergoes in translation are a part of life, and may contain unexpected surprises that lead to new understandings. When I was working in Tibet, for example, seeing fading murals on temple walls illustrating the story of Indian Buddhism coming to China, I had difficulty making sense of the similarities and differences between Chinese Buddhism and Indian Buddhism. Because my main task there was archaeology, I assumed the difference was merely cultural and thought no more about it. I was only partially right. The other, more interesting part of the equation was how Chinese culture affected translation and its role in the creation of a distinctively Chinese version of Buddhism.

Dr. Chi-yu Chu has found that the differences between Chinese Buddhism and Indian Buddhism can be traced back to the initial translations. Those translations were collaborative efforts. The monks from India and central Asia who brought Buddhism to China around 200 AD collaborated with Chinese monks to translate the Sanskrit text into Chinese. These translations were succinct, possibly because they were written on bamboo strips, but the terse translations could also have been a product of language difficulties involved in the collaborative translation efforts. The foreign monks could probably speak only a few sentences of Chinese, and the Chinese receiving the Buddhist scripts had little understanding of either original context for the texts or the language of the foreign monks. Yet, over the 900-year history of Buddhist translation, the quality improved and there were attempts to make the translated literal texts more intelligible to Chinese readers. Because there were no Chinese equivalents for many of the Buddhist beliefs, translators began expressing Buddhist ideas in native Daoist concepts that were widely understood. Inevitably, new Chinese characters were created to accommodate these concepts. Thus, many differences between Chinese Buddhism and Indian Buddhism resulted from seemingly accidental and culturally-based ways that languages evolve and add new chains of meaning.

Yet, just as translations can create distinctions, they can also highlight similarities and create bridges between cultures. Translated films are one example. The rise of world music is another. Globalization and multiculturalism provide the opportunity to access meanings in ways we never imagined.

These thoughts about translation are, as the Chinese proverb says, ‘throwing a stone to attract jade,’ which means that I am offering a rough beginning to attract more polished opinions from others. The Center will provide a venue for this topic next semester with a series of public presentations on translation. Although you yourself may never formally translate anything, through this series you will experience how fundamental the art of translation is to human culture, how impossible it is to live without its loss and its gain.

Jian Leng, Assistant Director
Center for the Humanities

In the middle of July I checked my mailbox in Seattle, WA, and found one of the many letters I received from Washington University as an incoming freshman. I added this letter, with a header stating “Work-Study” to the pile of mail that had slowly been accumulating, not thinking much of it.

Three months later and 3,000 miles away, that letter about a thing called “Work-Study” has become a bit more than a letter. In the past two months of working for the Center for the Humanities, I’ve learned the basics of running a library, researched the entire Washington University library system, helped organize a monthly reading, and I even placed labels on each and every copy of last month’s The Figure in the Carpet.

The experience I value the most, though, is getting to know the Center for the Humanities library. I think that the 3,000 volume collection is quite possibly one of Washington University’s “best kept secrets,” housing a collection of poetry, prose, rare literature, and even comic books. While very few of my fellow students know about it, I’d like to invite them, along with all other members of the Washington University community, to visit our library and share the secret of our unique collection.

While the collection may be small, it offers a great assortment of genres not seen in any other campus libraries. Browsing through a single shelf of our collection, I found this variety first hand. Stephen Tudor’s collection of poetry about sailing, entitled Haul Out, sits just a few feet above a rare proof of John Updike’s well know collection of novels, Rabbit at Rest. An antique collection of essays from 1927 is sandwiched next to Sweet Talk, a collection of Stephanie Vaughn stories that detail life and love in the modern day. This single section is representative of the library itself, a mix of the old, the new, and the rare.

Amidst this assortment there are seven categories: fiction, poetry, biography, drama, essay, language, and literature.

Our fiction, poetry, literature, and biography sections feature the work of many up-and-coming writers, as well as original editions of well-known classics. We also include the work of many writers who have spoken through our Center for the Humanities Writers Series in years past. As new writers join us, we constantly update our collection with their work. Most recently, we’ve added three novels by author Lorenzo Carcaterra, who did a reading this past month.

Our collection of drama, essays, and language is a bit smaller and more focused on rare and antique works. I think the language section has a certain je ne sais quoi or, that is to say, a certain charm to it, as well as a focus on French, Swedish, German, and Spanish. While our language collection is focused on literature, our volumes on drama are more of a “how to,” with many works detailing the basics of playwriting.

The Center for the Humanities library is hardly done. Everyday, I see new volumes added to our collection. My favorite recent addition is every issue of Mad Magazine from 1952 to 1998 on CD-ROM. Also on CD-ROM, we recently acquired many rare and hard to find comic books, ranging from Strange Word to Chamber of Chills to Wimmin’s Comix. All of these are part of our developing children’s literature collection, which also includes books on writing for children. In conjunction with this children’s collection, we’ve started collecting back issues of the Baum Bugle, the official magazine of the Wizard of Oz Society, which published articles on all things L. Frank Baum. Mad Magazine and comic books and children’s literature, oh my!

Whether you’re looking to find a novel that’s off the beaten track, read a collection of poetry, reminisce with some children’s literature, or just have a few laughs with Mad Magazine, we invite you to stop by any time between 9:00 AM and 4:30 PM during the week and see what our library can offer you. Also, feel free to browse the library catalog, at any hour, available online at http://cenhum.artsci.wustl.edu.

Sarah Kliff is a Federal Work Study student at the Center for the Humanities, Washington University.

Katherine Paterson was born in Huaiyin, China, on October 31, 1932, the daughter of Presbyterian missionaries. At the beginning of World War II, the family was forced to evacuate to the United States. Ms. Paterson graduated Summa Cum Laude in English Literature from King College in Bristol, Tennessee. She spent a year teaching sixth grade in a rural Virginia school, which later was transformed into the setting for her best known book, Bridge to Terabithia.

After receiving a master’s degree from the Presbyterian School of Christian Education in Richmond, Virginia, she spent four years in Japan under the auspices of the Presbyterian Church, U.S., where she studied the Japanese language and later worked as an assistant to eleven rural pastors on the island of Shikoku.

The Presbyterian Church awarded her a fellowship for further study at Union Seminary in New York City. It was there she met John Paterson, a Presbyterian minister, to whom she has now been married for 41 years. The Patersons have four children and are the grandparents of seven.

Her books have been published in over 25 languages and have garnered many awards. Katherine Paterson will read from her work on November 17 at 8 pm in Room 204 of Washington University Law School’s Anheuser-Busch Hall. She will give a seminar with time for audience questions on Tuesday afternoon, November 18, at 4 pm at McMillan Café in Old McMillan Hall. A reception and book signing will follow both events, which are free and open to the public.

The Center for the Humanities announces its second annual Faculty Book Celebration, which will be held on Thursday, December 4, 2003 at 4 pm in the Women’s Building Formal Lounge, Washington University.

At our first celebration, four WU Arts and Sciences faculty members who had recently published books read briefly from their work, gave an overview of their books, and answered questions. In addition, the books of close to one hundred WU faculty were displayed. It was, on the whole, a richly rewarding afternoon for all who participated and all who attended. We learned something about what our colleagues have been up to and found an opportunity to come together to celebrate what a university is supposed to be about, research, writing, the creating of knowledge, and the critiquing of knowledge’s claims. It is this, the scholarly enterprise, the power of the book as argument and as art, that brings us together and makes us a community.

This year, we shall again have two or three faculty members who have recently published books make short presentations about their work. We shall also display books by the Arts and Sciences faculty that have been published within the last five years. Following the faculty presentations, there will be a reception and an opportunity to purchase faculty books. Please join us for the celebration!