Xu Yuanchong was drafted into the army in his senior year and participated in the translation work of the confidential secretary office of the Flying Tigers. Later, President Mei Yiqi told him that he had to go back to school for one year before he could graduate. National The National SouthWest Associated University pays attention to democracy, advocates academic independence and freedom of education, and advocates professor-run schools. He once shouted the slogan that "the scale of academic freedom is built in and the title of democratic fortress is built outside", which is praised by the world. However, the school can be described as "strict in enrollment and graduation", which is absolutely unambiguous.

National Southwest Associated University inherited Cai Yuanpei's spiritual tradition of "freedom of thought and inclusiveness", which made all kinds of thoughts blossom. In the later academic research and social practice, many college students have achieved much more than their teachers. In Xu Yuanchong, there is also a strong sense of catching up. He will carefully compare his translation with that of his classmates and predecessors. He said, "If I translate what others have translated, I will surpass him. What's the point if I don't surpass him? "

President Mei Yiqi is known as a "quiet gentleman", who doesn't like to talk much at ordinary times, but the book also records a humorous moment of him. Yes 1949. At that time, Xu Yuanchong had already studied in Paris. President Mei went to Paris to attend the UNESCO meeting, accompanied by alumni of Paris General Assembly. At dinner, President Mei slowly told a joke that someone was afraid of his wife. A man said, "Those who are afraid of their wives sit on the right and stay on the left." As a result, everyone sat to the right, but only one person did not move. Everyone asked him why he was not afraid of his wife. He replied, "My wife told me not to go to crowded places." You see, such vivid records let us see another side of this famous educator that is little known.

What Xu Yuanchong does is mainly translation between China, Britain and France. In fact, translation between Britain and France is not difficult, but between China and Britain and between China and France. Why? Because about 90% of western languages such as English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese can find equivalents, that is to say, every word can have a corresponding translation, and they all belong to Latin or Germanic. However, the equivalence between Chinese and these western languages is much less, and only about 40% of the languages can find equivalents, which means that it is impossible to adopt the principle of equivalence when translating Chinese and western languages, and a large number of free translations must be adopted.

If you can't find an equivalent word, you can't be completely faithful to the original text. In this case, the content of translation is either inferior to or better than the original, and literary translation should try to choose a better expression than the original, which is the "optimization translation theory" advocated by Xu Yuanchong.

Xu Yuanchong agrees with Mr. Qian's assertion that beauty is a dilemma, but he holds the opposite view on how to choose. He believes that poetry is noumenon and the first; Translation is a method, not a secondary one. Poetry needs beauty and translation needs truth; The translation of beautiful poems is not beautiful and cannot be regarded as true; Only the pursuit of beauty without distortion as much as possible is the principle of poetry translation. Therefore, seeking truth is a low standard, a necessary condition and a negative requirement; The pursuit of beauty is a high standard, a sufficient condition and a positive requirement.

Bian translated "the fallen leaves are like waterfalls" into "the vast forest is full of fallen leaves", and Xu Yuanchong translated "when I watch the long river rolling forward" into "the endless river rolling forward". By careful comparison, you will find that these two versions are not only beautiful in artistic conception and antithetical in sentence patterns, but also catchy in rhyme, which truly achieves the beauty of meaning, sound and form.

Undoubtedly, such translation can make foreign readers feel the aesthetic mood of China's ancient poems. All Xu Yuanchong's translations, whether domestic or foreign, are so meticulously crafted.

Summary: Such exquisite and elegant translation requires both a solid language foundation and inspiration from the sky. Yang Zhenning, an old classmate of National Southwest Associated University and a famous physicist, once joked with Xu Yuanchong, "You get an inspiration almost every day, but it took me many years to get one."

Xu Yuanchong devoted himself to literary translation all his life. He felt that translation was a job of discovering and creating beauty. He said: "If the beauty created by a country can be transformed into the beauty of the whole world, isn't that the highest kind, the highest kind of pleasure?" ! "

From 65438 to 0999, ten professors from Peking University and Nanjing University jointly nominated Xu Yuanchong as a candidate for Nobel Prize in Literature. After reading Xu Yuanchong's translation of 300 Ancient Poems of China, a judge of the Nobel Committee wrote a letter to Xu Yuanchong, saying that his translation was "a sample of the great China traditional literature".

Xu Yuanchong's passion for translation originated from the national The National SouthWest Associated University, which stood tall in the war, and the national The National SouthWest Associated University was the place where his dream began. When he recalls Wen Yiduo, Wu Mi, Qian Zhongshu and Feng Youlan, he always thinks of their views on literature, beauty, translation and life. National Southwest Associated University has created a miracle, and Xu Yuanchong is one of them. His memoir shows us what education should be like.