Poetry
Belarusian Poems for Children: for the First Time in Chinese
M
Xue Jingqian, student of Gymnasium No. 29
Magazine Belarus is probably the first platform of recent years where Chinese translations of Belarusian literary works for children have been published. Significantly, the first translated story was a classic fairy tale by Uladzimir Karatkevich The Devil's Treasure. Then there were translations of fairy tales by Lyudmila Rublevskaya and Katsyaryna Khadasevich-Lisavaya. These fairy tales were translated by Sun Fanqi, a student of the Belarusian State University. And the translation project was initiated by a director and editor-in-chief of Zvyazda publishing house Ales Karliukevich, who is known for promoting the development of Belarus-China literary relations. For today’s issue, we have prepared a selection of children’s poems by Belarusian masters – Yanka Zhurba, Averyan Dzeruzhinsky, Ryhor Baradulin, Uladzimir Karatkevich, and Vasil Vitka. This is the first attempt to translate Belarusian children's poetry into Chinese. The poems were translated by a nine-year-old boy Xue Jingtian, a student of the Minsk gymnasium №29. We sincerely believe, that English readers will also enjoy English translations of these renowned Belarusian poets, as well as expand their knowledge of Belarusian literature. Most Chinese readers are not familiar with Belarusian children's literature, as very few Belarusian works for children and teenagers have been translated into Chinese.
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беларусь. belarus 2021
In the fifties of the twentieth century – the "golden era" in SovietChinese relations, when there was a real rise in interest in Soviet literature, children’s stories, and short stories by Yanka Maur and Ivan Shamiakin were translated into Chinese. In 1953, the Shaonian Ertong Chubanshe publishing house published a collection of five short stories by Yanka Maur called The Little Partisan. The collection included short stories Family, On the ice, Maximka, A Note (the title was translated into Chinese as The Little Partisan, hence the title of the collection) and Journey Around the House. The translator was Ding Ru. Young Chinese readers first learned about Palesse Robinsons and TVT by Yanka Maur in the 1950s. Chinese translations of these short novels were also published as separate books by Shaonian Ertong Chubanshe publishing house: Palesse Robinsons (titled as Two Little Robinsons) in 1956, and TVT (titled as Incredible Society) in 1957. The translator of both novels was Wang Wen. The choice of works by Yanka Maur for translation into Chinese seems natural. Both Palesse Robinsons and TVT were significant pieces of children’s literature not only within the Belarusian literary space but also throughout the Soviet Union. TVT won the first prize at the AllBelarusian Children's Book competition, and Maxim Gorky became interested in the novel. At his request, Yanka Maur urgently translated the manuscript of the novel into Russian and sent it to him. This was on the eve of the First Congress of Writers of the USSR, and Samuil Marshak in his report On Great Literature for Children among others noted "a significant school story written in Belarus". Ivan Shamiakin works were widely translated into Chinese: Saleswoman and poet, Prima notte, Snowy winters, Telamones and Caryatides, Deep streams, Unrepeatable Spring, The Heart on the Open Palm, and others. However, these works appeared in Chinese as early as the 1970s and 1990s. But in the 1950s five children's stories were published as a separate book in Chinese: To Moscow, Natasha, The Boy from the Ocean, A Gift to the Leader, and In the Snowy Desert. The collection was also published by Shaonian Ertong Chubanshe Publishing House. After a nearly fifty-year gap, in the 2000s there were several reprints of Yanka Maur. And after that, there was silence again. Therefore, the project of the magazine Belarus is to some extent the indicator of the revival of interest in translating Belarusian literature into Chinese. The poetry collection for this issue was translated into Chinese by Xue Jingtian. He is in the third grade of Minsk gymnasium №29. For the first time, Jingtian encountered Belarusian literature at school and immediately realized how different the expressive means in Belarusian and Chinese poetry were. Then he tried to translate a few poems himself. "The translation process helped me see the beauty of our languages, and each translated poem gives me a sense of accomplishment, the joy of a job done," says Xue Jingtian. Sun Fanqi accomplished literary editing of these poems. Veronika Karlyukevich
