In the face of Peking University students' questions, Lin said humorously, "I seldom do translation these years. One reason is that my own name is always one or two sizes smaller on the cover of books. I feel very unhappy after a Japanese name or even below it, even if he is Haruki Murakami. "
He said with a smile that in the international copyright convention, the translator's name must be one or two times smaller than the author's name, which is helpless and it is useless to protest.
As for translation, he thinks, "No matter how good the translation is, as Fu Lei said, after all, it is a' gossipy woman', but it is just a little better. People who have been megaphones and boasters all their lives are unwilling to be human. Besides, I can't write a novel like Haruki Murakami, but my style and language style should be above Haruki Murakami. "
He thinks his style can be romantic, a river of no return, or a small bridge, and the village is quite monotonous. But this is not entirely his skill, but because of the accumulation of China traditional literati and the deep soil layer, he only digs it occasionally.
In the last four or five years, Lin tried to change the image of a simple translator. He wrote a column for the newspaper every week for two years 100, and then published a book. Now it's the fourth book. Whenever the manuscript is sorted out, there are publishers vying for it, and he is not proud of it.
"But I can't write a novel. I tried several times and finally gave up with a sigh. Later, I understood that novelists are born with brains and anyone can write essays. Writing well and writing badly are another matter. If a novel can be written, it can't be written anyway. " Lin knows himself like this.
He said Haruki Murakami once said that novelists have three qualifications. The first is talent, and his understanding is literary imagination; The second is concentration; The third is follow-up, or endurance. He said that the most important thing is talent, which is innate and has nothing to do with personal calculation. Sometimes it should gush out by itself, such as Beethoven, Mozart, and some poets and singers, who squandered their rich talents. This process has no reference value for us ordinary people.
Lin said frankly, "In other words, what I lack is the talent to write novels, and it is useless to struggle. A person rarely realizes where his weakness and talent are, unless one day God suddenly implants the heartbeat of a novelist like me. "
"Mo Yan has a great place, surpassing Haruki Murakami in meteorology. It's a big weather, a man pattern. "
"In the final analysis, a gentleman is a feeling, a spiritual realm and a spiritual gender. With this state and spirit, women can also become men. Without this realm and spirit, men can also be women. " When talking about emotion and artistic conception in literary creation, Lin believes that literati should have men's feelings, that is, care about society.