ONE EXCELLENT resource for pre-May 4 Chinese fiction is the 30-volume series 《中国近代文学大系》, (Pre-Modern Chinese Literature Series), whose publisher translates the title as A Treasury of Modern Chinese Literature. Leafing through the volume devoted to short stories, I came across the following dialogue in 《查切课》 Schoolwork Inspection by 吴趼人 Wú Jiǎnrén: 北京学生曰："这是那儿来的事？" Note: in the remainder of this article, the character [亻奢], part of the Unicode extension but not in the GB encoding nor most font sets, will be replaced by the homophone 啥. The four lines of dialogue are spoken by students from four different parts of the country. The second student, from Guangdong, merely says that he is confused. The first student speaks Beijing-style Chinese, quite close to standard Mandarin (which at the time the story was written, of course, was not a legal standard yet), yet exhibiting the 儿 "ér" sound particular to northern dialects. The fourth student, from the region just north of the Yangtze river, also speaks a form of Mandarin, although he has a rather heavy accent. The writer represents this by borrowing characters: 只 zhǐ is used in place of 这 zhè ("this"), and 辣 là replaces 那 ná ("which" - note too that the separate character 哪 to represent this as distinct from the usual reading nà ("that") was not standard at that time). 辣块 then is equivalent to 那块, "where". This line, in fact, has the same meaning as the first, "Where is this matter coming from?" or "What's going on?" It is the third line that presents the most trouble to those outside of the Shanghai-Suzhou area. The student from Suzhou speaks in the 吴 Wu dialect, quite different from Mandarin. The characters 仔, 啥, and 介 are not usually found in those positions in Mandarin sentences. It turns out that 仔 acts like the Mandarin perfective 了 le, 啥 is like the Mandarin 什么 shénme ("what"), and 介 is a sentence ending intensifier like the Mandarin 呀. So the third student, like the first two, is asking "What's going on?": The student from Beijing said, "What's going on?" Translating this passage, or any other multi-lingual text, presents a problem: how should the translation express the three separate dialects in the original. The first solution is to ignore it and have the three students say exactly the same thing. Alternatively, the text could be varied slightly, as I have done above. The dialect could be identified ("..." he said, in the Suzhou dialect). While in the passage above it would be redundant, this is the approach taken by the Yang translations of various stories by Lu Xun. In the following passage, two officials speaking in an amalgam of dialects comment on how they cannot understand Laozi, who has just finished declaiming the Daodejing: "来笃话啥西，俺实直头听弗懂！"帐房说。 (Speaking of Lu Xun's Old Stories Retold, this problem shares some similarities with the early 20th century writers' use of English as just another dialect to play around with in their stories. Lu Xun, for example, has an exchange between flying travelers from the Kingdom of Power and Mystery in Curbing the Flood 《理水》, obviously making a statement about the relationship between China and the West: "古貌林！"(gǔmàolín) "Good Morning!" I'm not sure how this should be translated, either. Below, in the translation of Schoolwork Inspection, a man answers the phone with 哈罗 hāluó, the phonetic loanword "Hello". I've chosen to ignore the English in that case.)
广东学生曰："一头雾水。"
苏州学生曰："到底为仔[亻奢]事体介？"
江北学生曰："只是辣块说起的？"
The student from Guangdong said, "Mystifies me."
The student from Suzhou said, "What's all of this about?"
The student from Anhui said, "Who's responsible for this?"
"还是耐自家写子出来末哉。写子出未，总算弗白嚼蛆一场哉啘。阿是？"书记先生道。
老子也不十分听得懂......
"好杜有图！" (hǎodùyǒutú) "How do you do?"
"古鲁几哩......"(gǔlǔjǐlǐ) mumbling sounds
"O.K!"
A third method is to translate the dialect into a regional variety of English. This only works when the regional distinction has a parallel in the original culture. The northeast dialect in China, for example, sounds rustic and uneducated (a stereotype heavily exploited in popular comedy), so translating into "hayseed" English works well. The popular song from a few years back, 《东北人都是活雷锋》, had the line "俺们这嘎都是东北寅", "We're all northeasterners here," but this can be interpreted as "Us'ns is all nor'easters in these parts." In my admittedly vague impression, it may be appropriate to translate the fourth student's dialect in this way.
This method breaks down when the dialect in question is spoken by a cosmopolitan population; Shanghai, as the capital of modern culture in turn-of-the-century China, nevertheless spoke a dialect distinct from the standard language. There doesn't seem to be a variety of English that would convey "different" without implying "inferior" or "odd".
The story Schoolwork Inspection was written in 1907 and published in Fiction Monthly. The author, Wu Jianren, was well-known for his novels of social criticism, most notably An Eyewitness Account of Twenty Years of Strange Events 《二十年目睹之怪现状》and Sea of Regret 《恨海》. Stripped of all but the bare essentials of description, the story is mostly unattributed dialogue, and satirizes both the political situation at the time and the bureaucratic inefficiency of educational institutions. With a slight change in the nature of the MacGuffin, it would work rather nicely as a highly pedigreed in-class skit for an intermediate Chinese class or multicultural talent show. Original is in a Unicode text file.
Schoolwork Inspection
Wu Jianren
dring, drrinng, drrinnnnnnng...
"Eh? Who's calling at one in the morning? It must be some bored person playing around. Best ignore him and get back to sleep."
dring, drrinng, drrinnnnnnng...the sound went on and on.
"Eh? Who could it be?" Putting on his clothes he got out of bed, slipped on his shoes, lit the electric lamp, entered the phone box, and lifted the receiver: "Hello, hello, who is this?"
There was a buzzing sound from the receiver that said:
"I am the governor general. Who are you?"
"Oh, the governor general, who are you? This is the _________ school."
"Who are you?"
"I am superintendent ________."
"Tell all of the students they are not to sleep. We are sending officers to inspect their schoolwork."
"Oh, a schoolwork inspection. Yes, yes, yes, when will they come?"
"They will be there immediately."
"Yes, yes, yes. We will be prepared..." Hanging up the phone, he put on his socks and laced his boots.
"Come on!" "Come on!" "Hey, come on!"
"Come on. Here, here, here. Yes, yes, yes."
"Come on!"
"Ok, ok, ok. We're here, we're here."
"Quickly call all of the tutors, and have the dorm masters wake up the students. Agents are coming to do a schoolwork inspection.
"Yes, yes, yes."
"Get up, get up! Get up quickly, come on, get up!"
Hazily and chaotically, they put on their clothes and shoes and cut the lampwick.
The student from Beijing said, "What's going on?"
The student from Guangdong said, "Mystifies me."
The student from Suzhou said, "What's all of this about?"
The student from Anhui said, "Who's responsible for this?"
"Our card."
"Yes!"
"Reporting, sir. The four agents have arrived."
"Please, enter."
A salute and a bow.
"Have a seat."
"My brothers and I are here to carry out our instructions to inspect the students. We have no need to sit down. Let us then go to the lecture hall."
"Yes, yes, yes."
"Please, please, this way."
"We will follow you."
"Come, light the lantern."
"Yes."
Dongdongdong, donglong, donglong, donglong...
The students entered in single file.
"Are all the students here?"
"Yes, all of the students have arrived."
"Superintendent, sir, and teachers, please keep a close watch. My brothers and I will return after our inspection."
"Yes, yes, yes. Take your time."
Trunks rifled through, suitcases overturned, quilts torn off, curtains ripped down, drawers opened, floors pried up.
"Nothing, nothing."
"Nothing, nothing."
"Must be a rumor."
"Must be a rumor."
"Return and report."
"Return and report."
"Superintendent, sir, and teachers: at ease. There is nothing the matter. Farewell, and sorry to have disturbed you."
"Won't you have a seat in the reception room?"
"No, no, we still have to things to report."
"Take care!"
"Take care!"
"Take care!"
"Take care!"
The guests left.
The teachers asked the supervisor, "What was that about?"
The supervisor asked the superintendent, "What was that about?"
The superintendent asked the students, "What was that about?"
The students asked the teachers, "What was that about?"
"Don't know", "Don't know", "Don't know", "Don't know"; no one knew, a complete unknown.
The superintendent, the supervisor, and the teachers returned to their rooms, and the students scattered.
Student A said, "Yours?"
Student B said, "In my trousers."
"Yours?"
"Also in my trousers."
"Yours?"
"Also in my trousers."
Someone said, "Mine was in my sleeve."
Everyone said, "Dangerous, dangerous - as soon as someone touched your arm your secret would be out."
"Bring it out and let's see what it is."
"People's Journal."
"Yours?"
"Also People's Journal."
"Yours?"
"Also People's Journal."
"How many do we have altogether?"
"Forty copies."
Originally published in Fiction Monthly #8, April 1907. This text taken from fiction volume #7 of the series A Treasury of Modern Chinese Literature, published by Shanghai Book Store, 1992.
Note: People's Journal was a revolutionary newspaper started by the Chinese Revolutionary Alliance in Tokyo in the early 1900s. It was later suppressed, but in its pages were found the writings of such reformers as Sun Yat-sen and Wang Jingwei.
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