Picking up pearls from the sea of words: Essays after the translation of “The World of Peter Rabbit”

 
*Note: The fol­low­ing con­tent was writ­ten in the sec­ond half of 2010 and has recent­ly been reor­ga­nized. The eight books I trans­lat­ed a few years ago have final­ly been pub­lished: The Tale of Peter Rab­bit, The Tale of Ben­jamin Rab­bit, The Tale of Two Bad Mice, The Tale of Mr. Jere­my Fish­er­man, The Tale of Tom the Cat, The Tale of Jemi­ma Pud­dle-Duck, The Tale of the Fur­ley Rab­bit, and The Tale of John­ny the City Mouse.

   
Coin­ci­den­tal­ly, before Chil­dren’s Day last year, I also wrote a long arti­cle intro­duc­ing pic­ture book mas­ters, and Miss Pot­ter was the high­light of the open­ing. If you are inter­est­ed, you can also take a look:Mas­ters of the Art of Sto­ry­telling for Chil­dren (1–7).
 
   
I believe it’s impos­si­ble to trans­late from one lan­guage to anoth­er with­out loss of mean­ing. No mat­ter how hard the trans­la­tor racks their brains or uses every trick in their book, they can only par­tial­ly con­vey the orig­i­nal mean­ing. If the orig­i­nal author pos­sess­es pro­found lin­guis­tic mas­tery and ful­ly cap­tures the beau­ty of their cul­ture, this presents an extreme­ly daunt­ing chal­lenge for the trans­la­tor. Imag­ine how to trans­late Du Fu’s poem, “Stars hang low over the vast plain, the moon surges over the mighty riv­er,” into Eng­lish. For­get Eng­lish, even Chi­nese prose would be dif­fi­cult to per­fect­ly reca­pit­u­late. Yet, this ardu­ous task must be under­tak­en, and indeed, there are those who fool­ish­ly rev­el in it, find­ing its own cap­ti­vat­ing joy.
   
Miss Porter’s “Peter Rab­bit’s World” is one of those texts that is both incred­i­bly beau­ti­ful and play­ful in Eng­lish. Its writ­ing is ele­gant and refined, its choice of words and sen­tences often con­ceal­ing sub­tle wit, and its under­ly­ing sense of irony and humor is per­me­at­ed with a sense of humor. Since her sto­ries are pri­mar­i­ly intend­ed for chil­dren, the prose is sim­ple and flu­ent, the tone friend­ly and nat­ur­al. Even when sub­tle satire of world­ly mat­ters is sub­tle, it’s only meant to elic­it a smile from the read­er. Although I’ve tak­en great pains in the trans­la­tion, I would­n’t pre­sume to have ful­ly restored the orig­i­nal. It would be a bless­ing to avoid over­ly detract­ing from it. How­ev­er, there are some words in the orig­i­nal text that, no mat­ter how painstak­ing­ly craft­ed, can­not be ful­ly recon­struct­ed in Chi­nese. Yet, they hold such a pro­found charm, like beau­ti­ful shells on the beach, invit­ing you to pick them up. You don’t have to pos­sess them, just to enjoy them and mar­vel at the won­ders of nature. Unable to keep this plea­sure to your­self, I’d like to share with you some of the shells I found in “Peter Rab­bit’s World.”
 
About ani­mals and plants
 
   
wood­mouse, is actu­al­ly a type of vole, com­mon in West­ern Europe. They can live in woods, but are more com­mon­ly found under hedges near peo­ple’s homes. Porter fre­quent­ly men­tions this mouse in her books, and the most famous char­ac­ter not only has a name, but also a very dis­tinc­tive one:Thomasi­na
Tit­tle­mouse (Thomasi­na Tit­tle­mouse)、Tim­o­thy William (nick­named Tim­my Willie).
 
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Wood rats are incred­i­bly adorable, their most proud fea­ture being their long, ele­gant tails. These tails can be quick­ly snapped off when caught, but they nev­er grow back. This char­ac­ter­is­tic was clev­er­ly incor­po­rat­ed into “The Sto­ry of John­ny Town Mouse” by Miss Porter. The short tail of coun­try mouse Tim­my Willie like­ly stems from such expe­ri­ences, prompt­ing the town mouse to ask him if he’d ever been caught in a mouse­trap.
 
Is the coun­try life of the cute woodrat Willy Miss Pot­ter’s ide­al?

It is cer­tain that this kind of life is not what city mouse John­ny longs for :)
 
   
Mrs. Mouse had no name when she first appeared in The Tale of Peter Rab­bit. How­ev­er, in The Tale of Flop­sy Rab­bit, she not only got a very imag­i­na­tive name Thomasi­na, but also made a great con­tri­bu­tion by help­ing lit­tle Ben­jamin Rab­bit save his and Flop­sy’s lit­ter of baby rab­bits. Lat­er, Miss Porter sim­ply wrote a sto­ry specif­i­cal­ly for her (The Tale of Flop­sy Rab­bit).
Tale of Mrs. Tit­tle­mouse), which shows how much she loves wood rats!
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Mrs. Mouse first appeared in The Tale of Peter Rab­bit.
 
   
rab­bit-tobac­coThe laven­der plant is per­haps the most inter­est­ing plant men­tioned in Miss Pot­ter’s books. Even more inter­est­ing­ly, she her­self may not have been entire­ly sure what it was. In “The Tale of Lit­tle Ben­jamin Rab­bit,” she explains it as “the herb we call laven­der,” a rather dubi­ous state­ment. It’s high­ly like­ly that Pot­ter read it from the pop­u­lar Amer­i­can author Har­ris’s fairy tale book, “Uncle Remus Tells Tales,” which she illus­trat­ed between 1893 and 1896.
 
   
The sci­en­tif­ic name of rab­bit tobac­co is Gnaphal­i­um
Obtusi­foli­um, which grows in the Mis­sis­sip­pi Riv­er basin in the Unit­ed States, is often used by Native Amer­i­cans as a herbal rem­e­dy, and is said to have mirac­u­lous med­i­c­i­nal prop­er­ties. Today, we can search for images of this plant online.
 
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You have to look close­ly at the flower to under­stand how the “rab­bit tobac­co” plant got its name: the fur­ry petals resem­ble rab­bit ears! Miss Porter like­ly had nev­er seen this plant, native to the Cen­tral Unit­ed States, and did­n’t know why it was called “tobacco”—it’s actu­al­ly quite sim­ple: local chil­dren often smoked it as if it were tobac­co in their games, hence the name.
 
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The most won­der­ful place where rab­bit tobac­co appears is in “The Sto­ry of the Frog Rab­bit”. Mr. Magg comes home with the bag that was replaced (the rab­bits are peek­ing) and tells his wife that he wants to sell the rab­bits for tobac­co. How­ev­er, Mrs. Magg wants to use rab­bit skin as lin­ing, so she mocks him loud­ly: Rab­bit
tobac­co! — I think the fun­ni­est trans­la­tion here is prob­a­bly: “Smoke your rab­bit tobac­co!”
 
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Illus­tra­tion of “The Sto­ry of the Frog Rab­bit”: Mrs. McG­o­na­gall and Mr. McG­o­na­gall bick­er­ing
 
   
Chamomile, also known as chamomile.At the end of “The Tale of Peter Rab­bit,” Mrs. Rab­bit “made a pot of chamomile tea and gave him a dose!” It turns out that in Britain, this herbal rem­e­dy is com­mon­ly used to treat colds, phys­i­cal weak­ness, gyne­co­log­i­cal prob­lems, and even a vari­ety of oth­er ail­ments. It has even been found to be effec­tive in treat­ing some com­pli­ca­tions of dia­betes. In “The Tale of Ben­jamin Rab­bit,” Moth­er Rab­bit shouts, “Cot­ton-tail!
Cot­ton-tail! fetch some more
chamomile!” (Cot­ton-ball tail! Cot­ton-ball tail! Go pick some more chamomiles, come back quick­ly!) If you read it smooth­ly, it will sound as beau­ti­ful as singing.
 
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The mag­i­cal effects of chamomile tea
 
   
Fox-gloves, sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly known as Dig­i­tal­is or Fox­glove.Lit­er­al­ly trans­lat­ed, it means “fox glove flower.” This plant is often used med­i­c­i­nal­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly for heart dis­ease, but exces­sive use can be high­ly tox­ic. The dactyli­um blooms every two years, often with dense­ly packed, tubu­lar flow­ers of pur­ple, peach, or white, resem­bling a string of small bells or fin­ger gloves. Even experts dis­agree on why it’s com­mon­ly known as fox glove flower in Eng­lish.
 

 
   
Obvi­ous­ly, Miss Porter, who is well-versed in botany, used this flower in her sto­ry for a spe­cif­ic pur­pose. In The Tale of Jemi­ma Pudle Duck, Jemi­ma first met the gen­tle­man-look­ing fox in a patch of dahlias! This was such an obvi­ous hint, yet the frisky Pudle Duck was com­plete­ly unaware of it.

Jemi­ma Pud­dle-Duck saw the “gen­tle­man” among the dahlias…
 
【About the name】
   
Miss Porter must have had a lot of fun nam­ing her char­ac­ters; some have a sto­ry behind them, some are just amus­ing word­play, and some are sim­ply the prod­uct of a sud­den inspi­ra­tion.
 
   
Peter Rab­bit and Ben­jamin Rab­bit
Bun­ny, the name must come from the two rab­bits that Pot­ter him­self raised.Flop­sy and Mop­syIt’s prob­a­bly a voice game that came out of nowhere. But after Ben­jamin mar­ried Flop­sy, all the chil­dren he had were called “Flop­sy Bun­nies”.
This is prob­a­bly a British cus­tom. Accord­ing to Chi­nese tra­di­tion­al cus­toms, it should be called “home rab­bit”.
 
 
Miss Pot­ter takes her rab­bit for a walk

Miss Pot­ter’s Rab­bit Sketch
A pair of broth­ers in dis­tress — Peter Rab­bit and lit­tle Ben­jamin Rab­bit
 

Look at this family——Fu’s lit­tle rab­bit
 
   
《Mr. Jere­my Fish­erThere are sev­er­al names hid­den in the sto­ry of the game.Mr.
Jere­my
Fish­erThe lit­er­al trans­la­tion is Mr. Jere­my Fis­ch­er, but “Fis­ch­er” in Eng­lish means fish­er­man, and the frog Jere­my in the sto­ry is a very unsuc­cess­ful fish­er­man. The friend Jere­my invit­ed to din­ner is also very inter­est­ing. A man namedMr.
Alder­man Ptole­my
Tor­toise(lit­er­al­ly “Mr. Ptole­my the Tur­tle, Coun­cil­lor”), who looks like an old tor­toise, and anoth­er one namedSir
Isaac
New­ton(Sir Isaac New­ton), but it is a large sala­man­der (newt). This is obvi­ous­ly a joke about the names of two famous sci­en­tists. In Eng­lish, the sim­i­lar­i­ty between New­ton and sala­man­der is rel­a­tive­ly intu­itive. Ptole­my’s orig­i­nal name was Claudius
Ptole­maeus, Claudius was orig­i­nal­ly the name of a lame Roman emper­or (Claudius), and lat­er evolved into the sci­en­tif­ic name of a tor­toise, so it became the tor­toise paint­ed by Miss Pot­ter, and Alder­man was prob­a­bly mod­i­fied from old­er­man. So, in the end, I trans­lat­ed it asMr. Ptole­my, the elder tur­tle.
 
Mr. Jere­my Fish­er

Two friends of Mr. Fish­er­man who came to the ban­quet: Mr. Tur­tle and Sir New­ton

Look at this Sir Isaac New­ton
 
   
《Talk­ing TomThe names in the sto­ry are also very inter­est­ing.Tom Kit­tenDirect trans­la­tion:Tom Kee­den, but this Kid­den actu­al­ly means cat. And his sis­ter, one is calledMit­tens, orig­i­nal­ly meant mit­tens, but is obvi­ous­ly derived from Kit­ten; anoth­er is calledMop­pet (Cat Beibei), orig­i­nal­ly meant lit­tle girl, but it seems to have evolved from Mit­tens. When three kit­tens went to play in the gar­den, their moth­er warned them to beware of padel ducks, andSal­ly Hen­ny Pen­ny
Hen­ny
Pen­nyThis is a famous hen from a 19th-cen­tu­ry folk­tale. One day, she was hit on the head by a falling acorn. She cried “The sky is falling” all the way to the king to report the news, but she and sev­er­al oth­er small ani­mals ran into a fox hole and end­ed up feed­ing the fox. This famous chick­en lat­er appeared in “The Sto­ry of Gin­ger and Pick­les” and became a gro­cery store own­er!
 
Talk­ing Tom and his fam­i­ly
 
About Ono­matopoeia
   
Eng­lish, as a pho­net­ic lan­guage, is very con­ve­nient for cre­at­ing ono­matopeia, and Pot­ter is a mas­ter at this. Her words can not only imi­tate sounds, but also sim­u­late expres­sions.
 
   
The Tale of Peter Rab­bitlip­pi­ty, was the sound of Peter’s foot­steps as he wan­dered around look­ing for a way after a des­per­ate escape, soft and slow -lip­pi­ty, lip­pi­ty——A lit­tle tired and hes­i­tant, there is real­ly no word in Chi­nese to cor­re­spond to it, so I can only use its expres­sion and rhythm to trans­late it as“Walk a few steps, jump a few steps, look around”.
 
Peter jumps and jumps
 
   
The sound used to imi­tate the three padel ducks walk­ing in “Talk­ing Tom Cat” is also quite fun­ny — doing the goose
step–pit pat, pad­dle pat! pit pat,
pad­dle pat!
The beau­ty of the orig­i­nal text is that it takes into account both sound and form. Miss Porter bold­ly used sev­er­al words that orig­i­nal­ly had dif­fer­ent mean­ings (but they have sim­i­lar expres­sions), main­ly focus­ing on their sounds, while the expres­sions can also be under­stood. Here I reluc­tant­ly trans­late it as “walk­ing in a duck­’s gait,Crack, snap, crack­le, snap! Crack, snap, shake, swing!“We can only sep­a­rate them and take care of both aspects.
 
Crack, snap, crack­le, snap! Crack, snap, shake, swing!
 
   
Exam­ples of this kind can be found through­out Pot­ter’s sto­ries, such as describ­ing the sound of plas­ter falling from the top of a wall.“pit­ter-pat­ter”, sim­u­lat­ing the sound of a horse trot­ting“trit-trot”, describ­ing the sound of frogs walk­ing in the water“slip­py-slop­py”, and the sound of a big fish jump­ing out of the water and bit­ing Jere­my the frog“ker-pflop-ppp”…These are the most inter­est­ing parts, but they are also the parts that give the trans­la­tor the most headaches, because if they give up, they always feel that the loss is too great, so they can only bite the bul­let and rack their brains!
 
A very large trout swam up, “Wow–Wow–”
Puff—Puff—”
 
【About cus­toms and cul­ture】
   
There are also some words that are easy to trans­late, but with­out expla­na­tion, it is real­ly dif­fi­cult for young read­ers to under­stand because they are relat­ed to the local cus­toms and cul­ture at that time.
 
   
for exam­pleTea Par­ty
par­tyTea par­ties are still held today, but in late 19th-cen­tu­ry Britain, they were pri­mar­i­ly for­mal social gath­er­ings between ladies, with many eti­quette-con­scious details. That’s why, in “The Sto­ry of Tom and Tom,” the mis­chie­vous­ness of a few kit­tens “dis­rupt­ed the dig­ni­fied and peace­ful atmos­phere of the tea par­ty.”
 
Ladies attend­ing a tea par­ty at Tom Cat’s house
 
   
Anoth­er exam­pleSun­day Meal
din­ner)At that time, every Sun­day was a for­mal event. Because Mr. and Mrs. Magg had to go to church on this day, Ben­jamin Rab­bit and his son would always go to Mr. Mag­g’s veg­etable gar­den on this day to pre­pare their own Sun­day din­ner as if no one was around.
 
   
Anoth­er exam­ple is the scene in Two Bad MiceDol­l’s House
houseA doll­house is actu­al­ly a fair­ly large, life­like toy, very pop­u­lar in tra­di­tion­al mid­dle-class British fam­i­lies. It was often used as an intro­duc­to­ry teach­ing aid for lit­tle girls about home­mak­ing, and nat­u­ral­ly, it became the ide­al set­ting for many fairy tales. The doll­house that Miss Pot­ter cre­at­ed was based on a real-life mod­el: a toy belong­ing to the niece of the pub­lish­er, Mr. Nor­man, who pho­tographed it for Pot­ter to use as inspi­ra­tion for her sto­ries. It was dur­ing those days that the two of them devel­oped from part­ners to close friends, even­tu­al­ly becom­ing engaged. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, fate played a trick on them…
 
A dol­l’s house from the book Two Bad Mice
 
   
There is a sto­ry behind every word.
 Miss Pot­ter movie poster

For­ev­er Miss Porter (1866–1943)

(The Argen­tine Primera División was com­plet­ed on June 1, 2011)