Words are beautiful, and so is silence! — Translator’s Afterword to “When I Met Language”

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– Read aloud by the trans­la­tor of “When I Met Lan­guage“Link-

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When we become par­ents, we always hope our chil­dren will learn to speak ear­ly. Once they can speak, we hope they will become increas­ing­ly flu­ent, with a rich vocab­u­lary and excel­lent expres­sion. Chil­dren who can speak well are always espe­cial­ly pop­u­lar, aren’t they? Because lan­guage is tru­ly a won­der­ful thing, a pow­er­ful tool for expres­sion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Con­fu­cius once said, “With­out study­ing the Book of Poet­ry, one can­not speak prop­er­ly.” (The Analects, Ji Shi). He empha­sized the impor­tance of expres­sion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and advo­cat­ed for the study of the Book of Poet­ry. This reflects his admi­ra­tion for poet­ic imagery and lan­guage, as well as his empha­sis on the lin­guis­tic and cul­tur­al envi­ron­ment.

Inter­est­ing­ly, Con­fu­cius once said, “I wish to remain silent.” He did­n’t want to speak any­more, and Zigong became anx­ious: “If you don’t speak, what will we stu­dents pass on?”—He felt that if the teacher did­n’t speak, the stu­dents could­n’t impart their knowl­edge. So Con­fu­cius uttered the fol­low­ing famous say­ing: “Does Heav­en speak? Yet the four sea­sons pro­ceed, and all things are born. Does Heav­en speak?” (Analects, Yang Huo Chapter)—Wow, Heav­en is silent, yet it guides the chang­ing of the sea­sons and the growth of all things. In just four sen­tences, he said “Does Heav­en speak?” twice! So…Is it bet­ter to speak or to remain silent?

 

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When I first read John Agard and Kita­mu­ra Megu­mi While col­lab­o­rat­ing on this some­what “odd” pic­ture book, I could­n’t help but think of this debate about words ver­sus silence. The adorable mon­ster who first appears in the book lives in a silent world. Most of the time, “he” (clear­ly male in the orig­i­nal text) is incred­i­bly hap­py, but some­times he inex­plic­a­bly falls into a state of icy cold­ness. Even worse, he can’t even say “sad” because he can’t speak. Then anoth­er, small­er but equal­ly adorable talk­ing mon­ster appears. This “she” (clear­ly female in the orig­i­nal text) is not only always hap­py but also has a spe­cial com­pas­sion for oth­ers. “She” helps “he” learn to use lan­guage; the first word is “hug.” They embrace and live hap­pi­ly ever after… Wait a minute! Final­ly, why do these two talk­ing beings pre­fer to spend silent nights togeth­er? Is it bet­ter to speak or not to speak?

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I believe that dis­cern­ing adult read­ers will find unique philo­soph­i­cal insights and humor in this “strange” sto­ry, but I’m not sure if that will be the pri­ma­ry focus for three- or four-year-old read­ers. They’ve just gone through the process of learn­ing to speak, and they can’t yet artic­u­late or dom­i­nate the con­ver­sa­tion like adults. There­fore, they might feel more sym­pa­thy for the char­ac­ter who can’t speak and pre­fer to expe­ri­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tion that does­n’t rely on stan­dard lan­guage. For exam­ple, a four-year-old boy abroad, after becom­ing fas­ci­nat­ed by this book, would drag the adults in his fam­i­ly along for a “crazy” ses­sion, using their own invent­ed “bab­bling” instead of every­day con­ver­sa­tion, along with eye con­tact, ges­tures, and oth­er body language—it’s a fun game in itself. But the illus­tra­tor, Megu­mi Kita­mu­ra, cer­tain­ly deserves much cred­it for mak­ing this book so appeal­ing to chil­dren, turn­ing the pages again and again.

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This Japan­ese illus­tra­tor, resid­ing in the UK, has nev­er won a top award, but his pic­ture books have a high­ly dis­tinc­tive style and a large glob­al fol­low­ing, mak­ing him a favorite sub­ject of study for researchers. His rep­re­sen­ta­tive works, such as *Arthur Is Angry*, *The Lit­tle Lamb Can’t Sleep*, and *Mil­lie’s Hat Trans­for­ma­tion*, are par­tic­u­lar­ly pop­u­lar in Chi­na. Frankly, it was because of him that I ini­tial­ly noticed this “strange” book. Kita­mu­ra Megu­mi’s illus­tra­tions may ini­tial­ly seem clum­sy and child­like, which is prob­a­bly one rea­son why young read­ers often like them at first glance. How­ev­er, upon clos­er inspec­tion, his draw­ing skills are excel­lent; the images are beau­ti­ful, and the com­po­si­tion, col­or, lines, and fig­ures are all metic­u­lous­ly craft­ed. The more you exam­ine them, the more you appre­ci­ate their beau­ty, and in terms of visu­al sto­ry­telling, they are often text­book exam­ples.

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This book is no excep­tion. Kita­mu­ra Megu­mi has cre­at­ed a pair of quirky yet incred­i­bly endear­ing char­ac­ters, giv­ing the work a pri­mal, sur­re­al feel. The pro­tag­o­nists are set on an Eden-like island with jun­gles, caves, and some­times glac­i­ers or seem­ing­ly scorch­ing envi­ron­ments in the background—clearly reflec­tions of their inner state. Occa­sion­al­ly, on the same dou­ble-page spread, the left and right pages even depict dif­fer­ent sea­sons. In oth­er words, this “direc­tor” changes the stage set­ting accord­ing to the mood and the needs of the plot. Under­stand­ing this makes it easy to appre­ci­ate the many care­ful­ly craft­ed and inter­est­ing arrange­ments in the illus­tra­tions. For exam­ple, the mute “he” is always sur­round­ed by a flock of small white birds, a sin­gle species, but always seem­ing to be an exten­sion of his emo­tions; while the talk­ing “she” is sur­round­ed by a group of dif­fer­ent kinds of small ani­mals, var­i­ous col­ors, some run­ning on the ground, some fly­ing in the sky. This arrange­ment is clear­ly a metaphor, per­haps rep­re­sent­ing that the talk­ing one is more like­ly to attract dif­fer­ent types of friends, but the mute one may also have die-hard fans. Of course, in the end, these two groups nat­u­ral­ly merge togeth­er.

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As a trans­la­tor, I had to face the chal­lenge of lan­guage head-on. The orig­i­nal text was a poem, with some­what arbi­trary rhyming, but still sev­er­al instances of rhyme. The most dif­fi­cult part to trans­late was its some­what humor­ous and quirky poet­ic qual­i­ty; it is said that…Poet­ic beau­ty is often what is lost in the process of trans­la­tion.Despite the dif­fi­cul­ties, I can only do my best. For me, the most chal­leng­ing aspect of this book is its title…“When Crea­ture Met Crea­ture”“Should we trans­late it direct­ly as ‘When Biol­o­gy Meets Biol­o­gy’ based on the AI’s sug­ges­tion?”

The most dif­fi­cult word to han­dle is “crea­ture,” which has at least three pos­si­ble mean­ings in Eng­lish that apply to this book: first, “organ­ism,” refer­ring to liv­ing beings, includ­ing ani­mals and humans; sec­ond, “mon­ster,” refer­ring to strange, imag­i­nary crea­tures; and third, “per­son,” often deroga­to­ry, but also poten­tial­ly neu­tral. Regard­less of which trans­la­tion you choose, you will soon face the chal­lenge of…“Crea­ture-Of-No-Words”“and”“Crea­ture-Of-Words”“This presents a dilem­ma in trans­lat­ing the main char­ac­ters: should they be trans­lat­ed as ‘crea­tures that can­not speak’ and ‘crea­tures that can speak,’ or ‘mon­sters that can­not speak’ and ‘mon­sters that can speak’? Or even ‘silent mon­sters’ and ‘mon­sters that can speak’? — Obvi­ous­ly, all of these are awk­ward!”

After much delib­er­a­tion and repeat­ed test­ing, I decid­ed to aban­don trans­lat­ing the word “crea­ture.” After all, Kita­mu­ra Megu­mi clear­ly under­stood the exis­tence depict­ed in that way in her art­work; the def­i­n­i­tion and clas­si­fi­ca­tion are left to the read­er’s dis­cre­tion. Instead, we could try nam­ing the main char­ac­ters. Any char­ac­ter a child can empathize with will sure­ly have a name. Sud­den­ly, “吾吾” and “语语” popped into my head. “吾” is indeed “I,” and adding the “言” rad­i­cal makes it “语”—they even rhyme! The fun­ni­est part is that when “吾” does­n’t speak but opens its mouth to make a sound, it’s exact­ly “唔唔.” Thus, the book became *When Wuwu Meets Yuyu*. Chil­dren who read this book will like­ly find it hard to for­get the title, and they’ll also learn some basic pho­net­ic sym­bols along the way.

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I believe the poet John Agard would appre­ci­ate this lan­guage game, which is per­haps unique to Chi­nese. This should also align with the orig­i­nal work’s inher­ent metaphors and sym­bols:When Wuwu was unable to use lan­guage to express him­self and com­mu­ni­cate, he was basi­cal­ly self-cen­tered, which was the most prim­i­tive form of “Wu”. When Wuwu mas­tered lan­guage and could com­mu­ni­cate smooth­ly with oth­ers, he and “Yuyu” tran­scend­ed the state of being com­plete­ly self-cen­tered.And after that,When Wuwu and Yuyu are immersed in the world of lan­guage, they may advance to an even more enchant­i­ng world—a tran­quil world where lan­guage is so inte­grat­ed that it is no longer need­ed.At this point, it is prob­a­bly as Con­fu­cius said that we should tem­porar­i­ly for­get lan­guage and learn to lis­ten to the voice of nature.

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You might say this sounds a bit like impos­ing one’s will, and ques­tion whether the orig­i­nal author had so many ideas. I’m not sure if Mr. John Agard has read the Analects of Con­fu­cius, but he is indeed a pro­found poet, play­wright, and chil­dren’s author. Born in British Guiana in 1949, he immi­grat­ed to the UK in 1977 and lat­er became a nat­u­ral­ized British cit­i­zen. He was fas­ci­nat­ed by poet­ry from a young age, but was­n’t a good stu­dent. Dur­ing his sixth-grade grad­u­a­tion exam, he could­n’t con­cen­trate on the ques­tions and wrote a poem on the back of his paper, result­ing in fail­ing the exam and drop­ping out. How­ev­er, the exam­in­er great­ly appre­ci­at­ed the poem he wrote and encour­aged him to pub­lish it. He did pub­lish his first poem and grad­u­al­ly made a liv­ing as a poet. This tal­ent­ed poet of mixed African and Por­tuguese descent, with only a sixth-grade edu­ca­tion, is known for his pro­found social and cul­tur­al themes, often explor­ing top­ics such as race, nation­al iden­ti­ty, and the lega­cy of colo­nial­ism with humor, satire, and imag­i­na­tion. His famous poem “Half-Caste” is a poem that reflects on racial issues. It explores the com­plex­i­ty of mixed-race iden­ti­ty in a humor­ous and satir­i­cal way, empha­siz­ing the absur­di­ty of defin­ing them as “half-race”.

Argard received numer­ous awards through­out his life, the most impor­tant of which was the Book­trust Life­time Achieve­ment Award in 2021. The award was giv­en to David McK­ee in 2020, and in 2018, John Burn­ing­ham and his wife Helen Oxen­bury joint­ly received the award. Argard was also the first poet to receive this hon­or.

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In this pic­ture book, a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Megu­mi Kita­mu­ra, Agard reveals his life­long fas­ci­na­tion with lan­guage. He clear­ly believed in the mag­ic of lan­guage, and his encounter with it can be seen as a great leap for­ward in evo­lu­tion. But what’s most remark­able is that Agard’s poet­ic lan­guage is sim­ple enough for four- or five-year-olds to under­stand and be cap­ti­vat­ed by, part­ly due to its dra­mat­ic flair. As a play­wright, Agard him­self was also a skilled per­former.There’s a video online of him vivid­ly recount­ing the book; the whole process is like a one-act play.There­fore, when adults share this book with chil­dren, I don’t rec­om­mend read­ing it aloud in the usu­al nurs­ery rhyme style. Instead, try exag­ger­at­ing a bit and adding more per­for­mance ele­ments. Per­haps this approach isn’t suit­able for oth­er pic­ture books, but remem­ber, this is the work of the wit­ty and play­ful poet and play­wright Agard.

How­ev­er, I think what touch­es chil­dren most about this book is the expres­sion of emo­tions and the com­mu­ni­ca­tion of feel­ings. The extreme puri­ty and kind­ness of Wuwu and Yuyu, the care and friend­ship between them, and the ulti­mate seam­less under­stand­ing and love. Yes, the most beau­ti­ful emo­tions often tran­scend lan­guage…

 

Writ­ten by A‑Jia on May 5, 2023 in Bei­jing

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[Appen­dix 1: Sam­ple pages from the Eng­lish ver­sion]

 

[Appen­dix 2: Enjoy the orig­i­nal Eng­lish text]

The orig­i­nal Eng­lish ver­sion of this book is a beau­ti­ful and dra­mat­ic poem. The full text is tran­scribed below for poet­ry lovers and those inter­est­ed in trans­la­tion. A YouTube link to the author’s own full read­ing (with a per­for­ma­tive ele­ment) is also avail­able:Sto­ry­time: John Agard reads When Crea­ture Met Crea­ture

When Crea­ture Met Crea­ture

John Agard

Crea­ture-Of-No-Words

I was hap­py to be fur­ry.

And nev­er in a hur­ry.

Crea­ture-Of-No-Words

They would lie gaz­ing at the sea.

Just lying there with­out a care.

Or play­ing with peb­bles.

Throw­ing them into the air

wish­ing they’d burst like bub­bles.

Since Crea­ture-Of-No-Words

lived in a world of no-words,

he would­n’t know to say HAPPY!

He’d sim­ply flap his arms

like the wings of the birds

and car­ry on gaz­ing at the sea.

When Crea­ture-Of-No-Words

had just eat­en some­thing tasty,

he would­n’t know to say YUMMY!

He’d sim­ply lick his bristly lips,

pat the fur of his tum­my,

Then do a triple back flip!

And on a freez­ing night

curled up beside a burn­ing log,

He would­n’t know to say FIRE!

It was enough just to feel snug.

O to feel that warm­ing glow creep­ing

into his sleep­ing and dream­ing!

Some­times, for no rea­son at all,

Crea­ture-Of-No-Words would get this feel­ing,

this feel­ing like the chill touch of ice.

This made Crea­ture-Of-No-Words

thump his chest, beat his head once, twice,

lift his eyes towards the far clouds

Yet, from his lips would come

a deep-down bel­ly-groan GRRRRRR!

The look on his face

That’s all.

And if you’d dare look him in the eye

you’d see a lit­tle tear gath­er

Like a rain­drop from the sky.

Crea­ture-Of-No-Words could sense

some­thing was real­ly un-mak­ing his day.

But SAD was not a word he knew how to say.

One day who should spy

him with her lit­tle see-far eye?

Who else but Crea­ture-Of-Words?

Crea­ture-Of-Words was also

Hap­py to be fur­ry.

And nev­er in a hur­ry.

Now, Crea­ture-Of-Words

lived in a world of words

and loved to speak them out loud.

When Crea­ture-Of-Words

She splashed her­self into the sea.,

She’d shout,

HAPPY! HAPPY!

When Crea­ture-Of-Words

I had some­thing nice to eat.,

She’d shout,

TREAT! TREAT!

When win­ter brought the shiv­ers,

she’d rub her palms in front of a flame,

close her eyes and say, AH! FIRE!

And that day when she’d spied

Crea­ture-Of-No-Words thump­ing

his chest, shak­ing and beat­ing his head,

and had heard him groan­ing

that ter­ri­ble bel­ly-groan GRRRRRRR!

she’d sensed his sad­ness with no word said.

There and then Crea­ture-Of-Words

She formed her arms into a cud­dle

and moved towards Crea­ture-Of-No-Words,

say­ing all the while, HUG! HUG!

Crea­ture-Of-No-Words stood there puz­zled

and gave what looked like a shrug.

Crea­ture-Of-Words then hugged her­self

And repeat­ed, HUG! HUG!

as she moved

clos­er

and

clos­er.

This time Crea­ture-Of-No-Words

He heard him­self say,

HUG!

And the two crea­tures did just that.

From that day the two of them lived

togeth­er in a house where words also lived,

which was all well and good.

But when they’d both had enough

of words falling on their ears

there was noth­ing they enjoyed more

than a no-words night beside the fire.

Stroking each oth­er’s fur. Just lis­ten­ing

to sweet silence after a long rain.