稿酬如此之低？出版社编辑揭秘真实的文学翻译圈
做一名出色的译员或许是很多语言专业童鞋最初的梦想，像许渊冲老先生那样徜徉文字的海洋，让中国的经典作品走向世界，让世界的经典作品走进中国，那是何等满足而倍有成就感的事情！
然而，现实是否真的和理想一样丰满呢？留法归国编辑兼自由作家YaoLiqing，结合自己在出版社从事文学翻译、编辑的工作经验现身说法，为你揭开中国文学翻译的层层面纱。
Two years ago, when I returned to China after completing my studies in France, I found a position as an editor of Chinese translations of French literary works. As a person who is passionate about literature, I was delighted to have found a way to make a living doing what I love most. However, little did I know that the cruel and onerous reality of working in a publishing house would quickly leave me feeling emotionally and physically drained.
两年前，当我从法国留学归国时，我找到了一份编辑的工作，主要工作内容是将法语文学作品翻译成汉语。作为一名文学爱好者，我为自己能从事最心仪的工作而感到欣喜若狂。然而，当时我对出版社工作的残酷和艰难的现实却一无所知，我没想到这份工作会让我迅速感到精神和身体被掏空。
As far as the translation of foreign literary works is concerned, quality is of the utmost importance. However, the state of literary translation in China made my job as an editor a far cry from what I expected. In China, literary translation is rarely well-paid: French-to-Chinese translators generally receive just 70 to 80 yuan ($10 to $12) for every 1,000 Chinese characters, while English-to-Chinese translators earn even less. As if these rates weren’t derisory enough, there was the rule that if a translator’s fees for a particular project exceeded 800 yuan, the publishing house would deduct 20 percent in taxes from anything over that baseline amount. Not surprisingly, very few talented, qualified translators are willing to work for such pittances.
就外国文学作品的翻译而言，质量往往是至关重要的因素。然而在中国，文学翻译的现状却让我感觉到，我的编辑工作与想象中相去甚远。中国的文学翻译往往报酬较低：法汉译员一般收入仅为每千汉字70~80元（约10~12美元），而英汉译员就挣得更少了。然而更让人觉得离谱的是，还有一项规则规定，如果译员某一项目的总翻译费超过800元，出版社将从超出此基数的金额里扣去20%的税款。所以，也难怪几乎很少有优质的译员愿意为了如此微薄的薪水而从事这一行了。
Translators must invest an enormous amount of time and energy if they are to successfully bridge the colossal divide between Asian and European languages. But owing to poor pay, however, many translators do a slapdash job. Some not only fail to adapt the structure of the original text so that it conforms to Chinese syntactic and stylistic conventions, but also make countless basic mistakes. Small wonder, then, that China’s most well-known online book review platform, Douban, is filled with criticisms of Chinese translations of foreign works.
译员必须要投入巨大的时间和精力，才能跨越亚洲和欧洲语言的鸿沟，完好地构建起沟通的桥梁。但是，由于报酬低廉，许多译员往往会敷衍了事。有些译员不仅没有充分了解原文结构，导致译文不符合汉语的句法和文体习惯，甚至还出现了许多基本错误。难怪中国最知名的在线书评平台——豆瓣上，会常常充斥着各种对外国作品中文译本的批评之辞。
Of all of the botched translations in recent years, the most laughable are perhaps the mistranslations of the names of some of the greatest contributors to China’s history and culture. The English translations of historical figures and works often use an archaic form of romanization — Wade-Giles — as opposed to the now-standard Pinyin. Or, in the case of the great sages Confucius and Mencius, they’ve had their names latinized as a means of rendering them more palatable to Western audiences. To make things even more confusing, certain historical figures’ names have been rendered in English according to their pronunciation in Cantonese, not Mandarin. These days, any ambiguity that results from these multiple transliterations can easily be dispelled through a quick online search. But in some translations of foreign works, the names Chiang Kai-shek, Mencius, and Sun Tzu — whose original names in Chinese are Jiang Jieshi, Meng Zi, and Sun Zi — have been transcribed back into Pinyin, producing gibberish such as “Chang Kai Shen,” “Meng Xiusi,” and “Sang Zu.”
悉数近些年的蹩脚翻译，最让人啼笑皆非的莫属对中国的历史和文化名人的姓名翻译了。中国历史名人和著作的名称翻译，往往采用罗马字母拼写的一种旧式用法——威妥玛式拼音法，而不是现行的标准汉语拼音。而对于孔子、孟子这类古圣先贤的名字则采用了拉丁化，便于西方读者接受。还有一种容易让人混淆的情况，有些历史人物的姓名是根据其粤语发音，而不是普通话音译成英文的。而现在，这种多重方式音译的名字均可以通过网络，迅速查到正确的译文。但是，在有些外国作品的中文译本中，蒋介石（Chiang Kai-shek）、孟子（Mencius）、孙子（Sun Tzu）这些中文姓名，却被用拼音胡乱回译成了“常凯申（Chang Kai Shen）”、“孟修斯（Meng Xiusi）”、“桑卒（Sang Zu）”。
Sometimes, it’s because the translators have an insufficient grasp of the language in which the original text was written, but more often than not, it’s a matter of work ethic rather than ability. Foreign language teachers at Chinese universities are required to translate a certain number of books. Consequently, we had many teachers who were willing to translate for us, even though we could only offer them modest remuneration. The translation samples these teachers produced were usually up to scratch — but when we saw their final efforts, we were sometimes dumbfounded by just how bad they were.
出现这种问题有时是因为译者对原文的语言理解不到位，但问题的关键往往在于职业道德，而非语言能力。中国高校的外语教师须要完成一定数量的译作，因此，很多教师愿意给我们做翻译，哪怕只付给他们很少的报酬。这些教师的试译稿件一般都能达标，但最终成品的质量有时却差到让我们目瞪口呆。
Because some teachers take on translation work purely as a means of fulfilling their school’s requirements, they don’t bother putting in any effort, and end up producing translations filled with errors and omissions. The most head-scratching work we had the misfortune of reading came from a teacher who had delegated the task of translating the book to several of his students. The final translations he gave us were highly inconsistent, not only in terms of their overall writing style but also in more fundamental terms, such as the way in which place and people names were translated.
有的教师只把翻译任务当作完成学校要求的一种方式，并不会付诸太多心血，导致译文充斥着错译和漏译。有位教师把一本书的翻译任务交给几个学生去做，结果交给我们的最终译文前后矛盾，不仅整体写作风格迥然不同，像人名、地名这些比较重要的术语译文也不一致，“有幸”读到这样的作品简直让我们头炸。
The haphazard attitudes of incompetent translators can be even more infuriating than their work. The most extreme example I can think of was a woman who decided to translate a book for us because she wanted to spruce up her résumé before applying to overseas schools. Her Chinese translation was virtually incomprehensible — but when we asked her to correct the errors and improve the style, she outright refused, arguing that she had already done everything in her ability, and that it was now up to the editors to wade their way through her mangled prose. Our only recourse was to dock her pay, and I basically had to translate the book all over again.
有些翻译水平差的译员所表现出来的漫不经心的态度比他们的译文还要让人抓狂。我脑海里最极端例子是，有位女士为了在申请海外院校前充实自己的简历，决定为我们翻译一本书。她的汉语译文非常令人费解，我们让她修改错误并改善文风，她却断然拒绝，称自己已经力所能及地完成了所有事情，难懂的译文就交给编辑去搞定了。我们只好降低她的稿酬，我基本上把整本书重新翻译了一遍。
While many of the translators who worked with us were seemingly indifferent to the quality of their own work, our editors were bound to the finished products by a deep sense of responsibility. This meant that every time we received a terrible translation, we were inevitably required to work overtime. In my work as an editor, I was required to proofread and edit in excess of 10,000 Chinese characters a day — but this is virtually impossible when you’re dealing with a poorly written translation. However, our bosses didn’t take into account factors such as the difficulty of the task at hand; they merely complained that we were slow and inefficient. My only option was to continue editing once I got home from work, and my working hours soon began to creep into my evenings and weekends.
虽然很多与我们合作的译员似乎不怎么关心自己的译文质量，但我们的编辑却对成品有着强烈的责任感，这就意味着每次我们收到劣质的译文，就毫无疑问地要加班。作为编辑，我每天至少要校对和编辑10000个汉字，但对于劣质的译文来说，这个量几乎是不可能的。然而，我们领导并不会考虑任务难度这样的因素，只会抱怨我们太慢，效率太低。我别无选择，只能下班回家后继续编辑译文，工作时间很快开始侵占晚上和周末。
A decent salary would have at least somewhat softened the impact of such stressful and tiresome work, but editors in China receive pitiful wages. An entry-level editor receives about 5,000 yuan a month, which is barely enough to cover the cost of renting an apartment in the suburbs of Shanghai and keep oneself fed and clothed. As a result, there is a high rate of attrition among editors: In my two years on the job, the majority of my colleagues left to pursue careers elsewhere.
丰厚的薪水至少可以在一定程度上冲淡这种紧张而令人厌倦的工作带来的影响，但中国的编辑薪水却少得可怜。刚入行的编辑月薪约为5000元，仅够支付上海郊区的房租和满足基本的温饱生活。因此，编辑的跳槽率很高，在我编辑工作的头两年，大部分同事都另谋高就了。
But why is it that publishing companies pay translators and editors so poorly for their work? I suspect that the cheap cost of books in China is the main culprit. To use my two most familiar points of reference as an example, the cost of a cup of coffee from Starbucks is more or less the same in France as it is in China: the equivalent of four or five U.S. dollars. In China, this is about the same price as a book.
那么，为什么出版公司会给予译员和编辑如此低的工资呢？我认为，中国图书价格低廉是最主要的原因。拿我最熟悉的两个参考点来说，在法国和中国，星巴克一杯咖啡的价格差不多，大概是4-5美元。在中国，这差不多是一本书的价格。
In France, however, a book is three to four times more expensive than a cup of Starbucks coffee. The recently released French translation of “Ping Ru and Mei Tang: Our Story,” hailed as one of China’s most beautiful books, sells on Amazon France for 23 euros ($27), for example, while the original text is sold on Amazon China for only 24.6 yuan — more than seven times less. Furthermore, China’s 14th National Reading Survey revealed that the average price Chinese readers are willing to pay for an approximately 200-page paperback novel is 14.42 yuan, or just over $2.
而在法国，一本书的价格却是星巴克咖啡的3-4倍。比如，被追捧为“中国最美的书”之一的《平如美棠---我俩的故事》最近发行了法语版，在法国亚马逊网站售价为23欧元（约合27美元），而中国亚马逊网站上的原版售价仅为24.6元，前者是后者的近7倍。此外，中国第14次全国读书调查显示，中国读者购买一本大约200页的平装小说可以接受的均价为14.42元，仅为2美元多一点。
I long to introduce the most outstanding foreign works of literature to a Chinese readership, but my ambitions have been repeatedly quashed by the unfortunate reality of publishing in China. This in turn gives translations of foreign literary works a bad name among Chinese readers, perpetuating a vicious cycle. The more powerless I felt to right the wrongs of an entire industry, the more I kept coming back to one remaining option: to simply walk away.
我渴望介绍最优秀的国外文学作品给中国读者，但这种想法一次次被中国出版行业的残酷现实所打击。这样的现状又反过来影响了国外文学作品在中国读者中的形象，如此一来就陷入了无限的恶性循环。对于改进整个行业的不公之处我越感到无力，就越想回归那条仅存的退路：离开就好。
（编辑:xueqi）
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