Ying Ying
Translator of 《伊索傳》 (The Life of Aesop) and 《驢仔》 (The Donkey)
At university I took a semester of German pronunciation. Young and ignorant as I was, I simply carried on with my secondary-school attitude and methods of learning: whatever the teacher fed me I copied down as heard, without seeking deeper understanding, wanting only to get through with the least pain.
As it happened, there was a classmate called Thomas, who would insist on finding books himself, checking them against the teacher’s explanations, and then openly challenging the authority in class. The whole class had never imagined there could be such a madman beside us! Watching the teacher gradually struggle to cope, his expression and tone shifting from calm to serious, we didn’t think about who was right; we thought: forget it, Thomas, don’t push him any further!
While all of us chose to drift along in a daze, Thomas insisted on being the one honest voice (一士諤諤).
So it is most fitting that he translated Animal Farm. That Napoleon on the farm grows ever filthier, more absurd and perverse is no surprise, because “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”; such platitudes are plainly true. But it takes two hands to clap. If these animals had Thomas’s persistence in seeking the truth, were willing to spend time and energy taking responsibility for their own lives, refused to follow the crowd, and spoke up when something wasn’t right, how could the pigs ever have toyed with them? Napoleon is of course detestable, but these poor animals are, as Lu Xun put it, bound to have something blameworthy about them.
And in these animals I see my own shadow from when I studied German pronunciation. No wonder Mencius said: the difference between humans and animals is very slight (人之所以異於禽獸者幾希).
Of course, the significance of this book is hardly that simple. In this age, with this kind of wake-up call (whether about the decay of human nature or the numbing of hearts), of course many people want to borrow it to remind one another. Not long after Thomas invited me to write this preface, I also heard that another group of dedicated people were translating Animal Farm into Cantonese, with the publication times overlapping too. This coincidence reminded me of the story of the Rhapsody on the Three Capitals (《三都賦》):
“At first, when Lu Ji came to Luoyang, he wanted to write a fu on this subject. Hearing that Zuo Si was working on it, he clapped his hands and laughed, and wrote to his brother Yun: ‘There is a boor here who wants to write a “Rhapsody on the Three Capitals”. When it is finished, it will do to cover wine jars.’ But when Zuo Si’s fu appeared, Lu Ji sighed in admiration, thinking nothing could be added to it, and so put down his brush.”
Given the situation of Cantonese and the hardships of the times, a hundred flowers blooming is surely a good thing. Whichever Cantonese translation of Animal Farm you read, I hope you won’t use it only to cover wine jars, but will enjoy the words, appreciate the wonders and potential of Cantonese, and stay alert and keep to your original intention.