博客采访：刘宇昆的专访 [美国媒体]

Ken Liu is an author and translator of speculative fiction, as well as a lawyer and programmer. A winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy awards, he has been published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s, Analog, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, and Strange Horizons, among other places.

刘宇昆是一名律师和程序员，也是一位幻想小说作家和翻译家，更是星云奖、雨果奖和世界奇幻奖集一身的获奖者。他在《科幻与奇幻》杂志、《阿西莫夫科幻》杂志、《类似体》杂志、《克拉克世界》杂志，《光速》杂志以及《奇异视界》杂志等刊登过作品。

Ken’s debut novel, The Grace of Kings (2015), is the first volume in a silkpunk epic fantasy series, The Dandelion Dynasty. It won the Locus Best First Novel Award and was a Nebula finalist. He has a collection of short fiction, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories (2016). He lives with his family near Boston, Massachusetts.

小刘的第一部长篇小说，《王者之慈》（2015年），是其丝绸朋克史诗奇幻系列“蒲公英王朝”的第一部，今年荣获轨迹奖最佳初作并入围星云奖，还有一部短篇小说集《折纸和其他故事》（2016年）。他与家人居住在麻省波士顿附近。

In addition to his original fiction, Ken is also the translator of numerous literary and genre works from Chinese to English. His translation of The Three-Body Problem, by Liu Cixin, won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2015, the first translated novel ever to receive that honor.

除了他的原创小说，小刘还将各种文学作品从中文翻译成英文。他翻译的刘慈欣着的《三体》，获得了2015年雨果奖最佳长篇小说，首次有翻译作品能获此殊荣。

Rachel Cordasco: You are one of the most prolific writers/translators I’ve ever encountered! How do you balance your own writing and translating fiction from Chinese?

瑞秋·郭达斯戈（以下简称访）：你是我遇到过的最高产的作家和翻译家！你是怎么平衡自身写作和中文小说翻译的？

Ken Liu: I get tagged as “prolific” often, which baffles me. I write slower than most writers I know, and I don’t keep a daily wordcount. I suspect this reputation has more to do with the fact that I wrote for almost a decade before being published regularly, and so the illusion of being a very fast writer is simply the result of publishing stories accumulated over a long time within a short period.

刘宇昆（以下简称刘）：经常被人贴上“高产”的标签，很是困扰我。我比我所知的作家写的都慢，而且也不能保持每天码字。我猜测这种名气是由于在能持续发表作品之前我差不多写了整整10年，长期积累的作品在短时间内发表造成了我写作很快的假象。

It’s the same with my translations. I translated the novels in the Three-Body series and other works over many years. That they came out within a short time doesn’t mean I did the translation within that timeframe.

翻译作品也一样，我花了多年时间翻译《三体》系列及其他作品，在短时间内同时面世不代表我是在这个时间段里完成译作。

As for balance, it hasn’t really been an issue. I accept very few translation commissions and turn down most invitations to write short fiction. For my own fiction, I try to pick themes where I think I can give them a unique spin. And I only translate works where I think my particular skills and translation approach will be beneficial.

至于平衡，这不算什么问题，我只接受了很少的的翻译委托，并拒绝了多数的短篇小说约稿。关于我自己的小说，我尽量选择能别出心裁的主题。同时我只挑选我的特长和翻译技巧能胜任的作品去翻译。

RC: When and why did you first become interested in literary translation?

访：你第一次对文学翻译产生兴趣的时间，原因又是什么？

KL: I got into translation purely by accident. My friend Chen Qiufan (a.k.a. Stanley Chan) had one of his stories translated professionally, and then asked me to take a look at the result. I started to make a few suggestions, but then told Stan that I thought it would be easier if I just did the translation from scratch. That story, “The Fish of Lijiang,” ended up winning the SFF Translation Award.

刘：进入翻译圈纯粹是巧合。我朋友陈楸帆的一部小说由专人在翻译，然后他找我指点一下成果。一开始我提了点建议，但之后就直言还不如我从头翻译来得更容易一点。那本小说《丽江的鱼儿们》最终获得了科幻奇幻翻译奖。

After that, I also got to work with Pathlight magazine, the English publication of People’s Literature, China’s most prestigious literary journal. Among other stories I translated for them, I particularly enjoyed Xue Yiwei’s “Taxi Driver,” one of the most beautiful stories I’ve ever read.

之后我又为中国最权威的文学刊物《人民文学》的英文版《Pathlight》工作，在为其翻译的作品中，我最喜爱的是薛忆沩的《出租车司机》，是我读过的最美的小说之一。

And the novels basically followed as commissions from the authors/publishers based largely on my reputation in the literary and SFF translation world.

基本上之后的长篇小说翻译委托，很大程度上是基于我在文学圈和科幻翻译界的名气了。

RC: Your translations of Liu Cixin’s Three-Body Problem and Death’s End, as well as the many short-story translations you’ve published in Clarkesworld, Pathlight, F&SF, Tor.com, and elsewhere, have introduced many English-language readers to Chinese sci-fi. Who else are you excited to translate?

访：你翻译过的刘慈欣的《三体》和《死神永生》，以及其他刊登在《克拉克世界》杂志、《Pathlight》杂志、《科幻与奇幻》杂志、托尔出版社官网等地方的许多短篇译作，向英语读者展现了中国科幻。还有谁是你乐于去翻译的？

KL: I have to be cautious here, because the nature of the power imbalance between the culture of the United States and the culture of China, and between contemporary English and Chinese, impinges on every potentially innocuous answer. Because there are many English works translated into Chinese every year but few Chinese works translated into English, and because there are many skilled English->Chinese translators but far fewer skilled Chinese->English translators, the net effect is that some translators of renown, especially in literary fiction, where the economy of prestige matters a great deal, have become gatekeepers and tastemakers, wield an enormous amount of power over their authors and their words, and shape the perception of the anglophone readership of Chinese fiction even more than Chinese authors. I think it’s a deeply problematic dynamic.

刘：我必须小心回答这个提问，因为中美文化和中英双语之间力量不平衡的实质，会妨碍到任何本无恶意的回答。由于每年有大量英语作品译成中文而中文作品译成英语者寥寥，更由于英中译者为数众多而中英译者数量远逊，造成的实际影响是，有名的翻译家尤其在金钱和名气起主导的文学小说领域内的翻译家，有着远超作家本身和作品本身的影响力，影响英美读者对中文小说的认知尤甚于作者本身。我认为这机制非常有问题。

It’s only recently, after looking more closely at the way power is accumulated and exercised in the field of literary fiction translation, that I’ve come to appreciate the complexity of the issues. To be sure, SFF translation is different and I’m a nobody, but I still feel it is best for me to avoid ever giving anyone the impression that I’m being in a position of power in that respect.

就在最近段时间，我仔细观察了文学小说翻译领域里影响力积累和实践的过程后，我才逐渐了解到问题的复杂性。当然，科幻翻译不同于此，我也只是个无名小卒，但我仍觉得我最好避免给别人留下我在这方面很有影响力的印象。

So, rather than giving out my personal literary opinion on what I’m excited about—which may be misunderstood as what is worth translating—let me say that I strive to promote/train other translators so that we have many Chinese->English channels rather than a few; I try to seek out writers and works that speak to me personally; and I do whatever I can to always center the author over the translator so as to avoid recreating the problematic power dynamics I’ve seen in literary translations.

所以，与其给出我欣赏的文学作品的个人观点，通常会让人误解为值得翻译，不如说让我试图提携帮助其他译者，这样会有更多的中译英渠道。我努力寻求我能产生共鸣的作家和作品，并尽全力将作者置于中心而非译者自身，以避免产生在文学翻译领域内见到的那种很有问题的影响力机制。

RC: What are some of the hallmarks/tropes/concerns of Chinese sci-fi?

访：中国科幻有哪些标志/譬喻/关注点。

KL: I get asked this question a lot, and I always point out that the question cannot be answered in a way that is satisfactory to those who want a real answer.

刘：我经常被问到这个问题，也一直指出这个问题的回答没法让追求真正答案的人满意。

Suppose you were to ask a hundred American SFF authors to name some of the hallmarks/tropes/concerns of “American sci-fi,” you would surely get back a hundred different sets of answers. Every author has her own concerns, politics, identities, obsessions, and interpretations for what it means to be “American” and what makes a work “scifi” — and thus the scifi written by each individual American author will be distinct.

比方说你找100个美国科幻作家，让他们说说“美国科幻”的标志/譬喻/关注点，你会收到一百个不同的答案。每个作家都有其各自的关注、政论、认同、困扰和解读，到底怎样算“美国”什么作品算“科幻”，而由此每个美国作家的科幻作品才会与众不同。

Chinese scifi, insofar as that category has meaning, is just as contested, diverse, idiosyncratic, personal, political, and resistant to generalization. China is a society that is undergoing tumultuous changes — in a few decades China has experienced the same kinds of transformations that took other states centuries. It is at once one of the most unequal societies on Earth as well as one of the most innovative, a place where postmodern political consciousnesses and protest identities co-exist with 19th-century-style oppression. It is impossible for anyone, even those who consider themselves part of the Chinese SF community, to reduce Chinese scifi to easy generalizations.

中国科幻，就这个分类本身的定义而言，硬要去归纳也是一样有争议有分歧、是特异且主观的，带有政治偏见的。中国这个社会正处于波澜壮阔的变革，几十年间中国经历了其他国家数百年内发生的转变，她既是地球上最不平等的社会之一，也是最革新的社会之一；是十九世纪式的压迫同后现代主义政治觉醒和抗议认同，能够共存一室的地方。没有人，即便是自认为中国科幻社区的成员，能够轻易地归纳中国科幻。

That doesn’t mean you won’t see a lot of statements like “Chinese scifi is/isn’t ” around the Web. For the most part, they’re made by people who have no idea what they’re talking about. As a general rule, the more confident someone can tell you what Chinese scifi is “about,” the less you should listen to them.

这并不意味着你不会在网上看见类似“中国科幻怎么怎么样”的言论，多数情况是出自对所说言论其实一无所知的人之手。一般来说，越斩钉截铁地说中国科幻怎样的，越不用去听他。

RC: Any current/future projects you’d like to tell us about?

访：有什么当前/未来的项目想与大家分享的呢？

KL: I do have a lot of fun projects going on right now:

刘：确实手上有不少有趣的项目：

I’m drafting the third and final volume in my silkpunk trilogy (The Grace of Kings (2015) and The Wall of Storms (October 2016) are the first two entries), which is hard work but also very rewarding.

我正在构思丝绸朋克三部曲的最后一部（王者之慈（2015年）和风暴之墙（2016年10月）是前两部），是一项艰巨任务但非常值得。

Speaking of the trilogy, the second book in my series, The Wall of Storms, is going to be released on October 4, and I’m super excited. There are lots more intrigue and politics and crafty battle strategies and oodles of silkpunk technology. And the two protagonists, a princess-engineer and a scholar-engineer who Get Things Done, have existed in the plan for the series since day one — it’s finally time to introduce them to the world.

说起我的三部曲，系列第二本《风暴之墙》将在10月4日出版面世，我超级激动。里面有更多的阴谋诡计，政治斗争，军事策略和一大堆丝绸朋克的科技。从系列一开始就在计划内的两名主角，靠谱的公主工程师和学者工程师，终于能展现给全世界了。

And as you know, my translation of the final volume in Liu Cixin’s Three-Body trilogy, Death’s End, will be out in September. This is my favorite volume in the series, so fans of the first two books are in for a treat.

还有你知道的，我翻译的刘慈欣的《三体》三部曲最后一部《死神永生》，将在9月面世。这是我三部曲里最喜欢的一部，喜爱前两部的粉丝们可以大快朵颐啦。

In November, Tor Books will publish my collection of translations of contemporary short-form Chinese SF, Invisible Planets. This book will contain award-winning stories by such luminaries of the Chinese SF world as Liu Cixin, Chen Qiufan, Xia Jia, Hao Jingfang, and others.

十一月，托尔出版社会出版我翻译的中国当代短篇科幻选集《看不见的星球》，收录了中国科幻大师如刘慈欣，陈楸帆，夏茄，郝景芳等人的获奖作品。

Finally, I’m also working on two more translations: Three-Body X, a novel set in Liu Cixin’s Three-Body world written by award-winning author Baoshu, and The Waste Tide, a post-cyberpunk thriller that also happens to be Chen Qiufan’s debut novel. Hopefully readers will get to see these in print soon.

最后，我还在从事另两部译作：《三体X》由获奖作家宝树创作的刘慈欣三体世界体系内的长篇小说，以及后赛博朋克惊悚小说《荒潮》同时也恰巧是陈楸帆的首部长篇小说。希望读者能尽快看到这些作品付梓。