No ‘Beowulf’ in Chinese

Translating Heaney and Heroism

“Beowulf” translated by Seamus Heaney

Why is there no Chinese translation of Beowulf, the elegiac heroic epic in Old English written around 1000 A.D., practically the genesis of any survey of English Literature? By comparison, multiple translations exist of Homer, Virgil, Dante, and other classical epics. The reason may lie in Beowulf’s relative obscurity and inaccessibility; furthermore, the poem exhibits a Nordic-Germanic alterity in its heroic vision, one that is totally alien to Chinese hero worship. In terms of language, few, if any, Chinese translators would feel compelled to master Greek or Latin before they embark on translation of Western classics. Their so-called source language becomes modern English translation, which is “resourced,” already once removed from the original language. Although equally dead, equally without a living community that speak them outside of academe, Old English is somewhat deader than Greek and Latin in that the latter tongues haunt contemporary Indo-European languages far more than Old English does modern English, a hybrid in itself. To negotiate between two languages as antithetical as English and Chinese is difficult enough. To insist on Old English would be like giving the translator on the tightrope not a pole, but a three-legged stool, for balance.

Conceptually, Nordic-Germanic doomsday heroism comes across as almost bizarre to Chinese. Any festive celebration in Beowulf, for instance, is followed in the same breath by impending doom, which is embraced because the choice of death and destruction attests to individual courage. While heroism presumes sacrifice universally, the drive for individual glory in conflagration, so to speak, paves the way for twentieth-century existentialism of bearing up despite absurdity and meaninglessness. Yet it runs counter to either Chinese tradition of communal harmony over personal aggrandizement or to post-1949 communist propaganda of self-effacing martyrdom. Hence, no Beowulf in Chinese.

Arising out of this translation project would be reflections such as this one conceptualizing, theorizing the absence of a Chinese Beowulf, not only the hero but also his brand of heroism. At this historical juncture of Sino-Anglo rivalry, the West’s archetypal soldier, the half-pagan, half-Christian dragon-slayer, wrestles with his own dark shadow from the land, ironically, of the imperial dragon. After having translated dozens of lines out of Beowulf’s 3,182 lines, I hereby tease out the challenges of “channeling” Seamus Heaney’s postcolonial translation and Western heroism for a Chinese audience. Specifically, I explore three taxing problems that defy sinologizing: Old English’s linguistic uniqueness of alliteration, apposition, compound word, and kenning; syncretic interlacing of Norse-Germanic pagan myths and the Christian faith; the uncanny Norse heroism lunging towards Valhalla and Ragnarok. Owing to the monosyllabic characteristic of the target language, the half-line structure of Old English verse lends itself to the Chinese translation. In the true Nordic chiastic fashion, here are the title, the first 11 of the 31 lines already translated, and the concluding line, line 3182, in Chinese:

北敖武夫屠龍記

1 說起古早丹麥 執矛的武士

統領之王 遶勇而雄壯

我們早已聽說 這些王子英雄的事蹟

比如雪羲生 多少族聞之喪膽

搗毀無數飲蜜酒之殿堂的凳子 燒殺劫掠

這武士之殺手 出生低微

不過是個棄嬰 卻逐漸崛起

勢力茁壯 氣概非凡

直到巨鯨出沒 海的比岸

10 沿海各族 都一致臣服

納貢 這可是個好王

. . .

3182 最呵護其子民 最愛惜其美名

To exemplify both bilingual challenges and transcultural possibilities, let me point out four “jousting matches” where English and Chinese words and concepts collide: the Chinese title; line 1’s “days gone by” (geardargum); line 5’s Old English compound word “mead-benches” (meodosetla); and the last line.

The title Beowulf is transliterated as Bei’ao wufu (北敖武夫). The Chinese version means “north-ao-warrior-male.” “North” resonates with the Nordic. Ao is the family name for the four Sea Dragon Kings of east, south, west, and north (always in that order commencing with the centrality of the east) in the sixteenth century classic Journey to the West or Monkey. Ao has since become a surname for Chinese dragons as much taken for granted as their embodiment of the life force of water. The association of water contrasts sharply with the West’s fiery dragons, a point on elemental forces taken up in the papers mentioned above. In addition to being a surname, Ao suggests “peripatetic wandering,” a nod to dragons’ free-flowing flight through air and water. Also unique to Mandarin notorious for homophones, Ao puns with “haughtiness,” “hubris” (傲), which implies a Chinese critique of Beowulf’s heroism that favors personal name and fame over the Geats’ collective well-being. Wufu for “wulf” signifies “warrior-male” or simply “warrior,” yet it carries a connotation of rashness, a possible disregard of judicious forethought. The choice of Chinese words that constitute Beowulf may appear unduly damning of his heroism. Given the options, though, Bei’ao wufu is rather an acknowledgement of the sea of cultural differences. The West and the East simply perceive the dragon-slayer and the dragon in a diametrically opposed way. The West’s good versus evil is destabilized, if not debunked, in the Chinese context. Bei’ao wufu comes with a Chinese suffix: tulongji (屠龍記), literally, “slay dragon chronicle,” a common idiom popularized by the knight errantry novelist Jing Yong’s Sword Heaven and Dragon Slaying Chronicle (Yitian tulongji 1961). This suffix of what the hero does is necessitated by the fact that Bei’ao wufu by itself is so alien to the Chinese sensibility that it would denote as much an abstract quality as a person. “What’s in a name,” or a title? The clash of two tectonic plates or alternate universes.

Heaney’s first line “in days gone by” (geardargum) is rendered guzao (古早). The two Chinese words are pronounced goza in Taiwanese and Fukienese, evoking the Taiwanese sensibility and industry of nostalgia over its “premodern” avatar around the turn of the last century and subsequent decades. To any Chinese reader, goza conjures up Taiwan and, in particular, its tourism catering to its own population as well as mainland Chinese visitors. My Taiwanizing of Beowulf from the outset of the translation is in line with Heaney’s indigenizing. Heaney’s “Introduction” attributes his project to the “epiphany” of chancing upon the Old English word “þolian” where the thorn symbol is replaced in modern English by th (xx). The Irish poet jumps from “þolian” to his hometown Ulster’s dialect “tholed” (“suffer” l. 14). Ridiculed as a whim by Anglo-Saxonists, Heaney nonetheless has found a way to claim their — English colonizers’ — magnum opus as his, to square it linguistically and experientially with his Irish heritage. I plan to carry on this postcolonial subversion in sinologizing as much as Taiwanizing Beowulf. Perhaps a bonding downright absurd in the eyes of some Anglo-Saxonists and Chinese purists, colonial masters and their master narratives have consistently ignored the suffering of the subaltern, in Ulster or in Taiwan, as well as the joy such pain, once clicked with the other, brings.

Old English abounds in compound words and material objects unique to the Viking Age, both nonexistent in my target language. An early indication of such difficulty is line 5’s “mead-benches” (meodosetla). So much of the pre-Christian Germanic heroic code is packed into that one punch, that one figure of speech: “a wrecker of mead-benches.” This requires unpacking and explicating, the translation inevitably moved from the original economy to verbosity, from the Beowulf poet’s making light of war to my restoring the gravitas. Insiders may readily grasp the deliberate distancing of violence, killing and burning passed off as broken furniture. Outsiders, however, would be perplexed by such coded speech tantamount to an in-joke. Mead-benches are housed in the Great Hall of Heorot, the nerve center for the exchange of gifts and drinks for love and loyalty amongst the comitatus (war-band). Mead, fermented honey and water with fruits and spices, graces (greases?) not only King Hrothgar’s banquet in Beowulf but also the Nordic God Odin’s Valhalla, Hall of the Slain. Mead is consumed both on earth by the heroes and in afterlife by those who have met their death in battle and collected by the Valkyries. To clarify that it is not just any bench, the translation inserts “the hall” (diantang殿堂) between mead (minjiu蜜酒) and bench (denzi凳子), a necessity that regrettably “wrecks” the compound. Mead has no counterpart in Chinese culture, so the neologism of minjiu (honey wine) is concocted over the ready-made qiongjiang (瓊漿 divine nectar, heavenly drink), although the latter surely flows in the never-ending Valhalla parties. Denzi (bench) also downplays the ceremonial weightiness, which calls for zuoyi (座椅 seat). Both “honey wine” and “bench” are folksy counterweight to the addition of the sonorous, even regal, diantang, which suggests as much a great hall as a temple, even a holy shrine. The result is the longest line in the translation so far, all because of one compound word.

Suffice to note the perfect symmetry of the last line, with six Chinese ideograms on either side of the caesura, with repetitions of words, syntax, and end-rhymes. To translate the Chinese translation back to English: “Most caring of his subjects / Most enamored with his beautiful name.” This manifests a Blakean “fearful symmetry” about to crumble now that King Beowulf is dead. Beowulf’s overriding love of undying fame has led to his fatal duel with the dragon, which dooms his nation, subjecting it to imminent ruin, prophesized by the elegiac “Heaven swallowed the smoke” (l. 3155). An aesthetics of brokenness, the last line titters on the caesura, just as the collective mass of over three thousand lines and of the once-prosperous Geats slowly sink into the blank space of the page and of history.

Can Beowulf’s afterlife be written in part in the “runes” of Mandarin? Will Heaney’s mammoth publisher, Norton, be interested in the Chinese market of over one billion readers? Will the Chinese market be interested in the first place? How much to charge for a copy of Sinowulf à la Heaneywulf? What is such heroism’s exchange value, in the midst of global fever and chills — the protracted low-grade fever of war on terror and the cold war of Sino-Anglo neoimperial rivalry?