1944, 19-year-old Wu Guoying suffered a great blow in his life. Originally normal ears. Within a week of hearing loss, the thick black hair was gradually stripped away. Typhoid took away his health, and life forced him to work as hard as possible, which was the external cause of his writing career. He gave up the textile course he studied at school and studied while treating diseases at home. Because of the upsurge of student movement in Kuomintang-controlled areas and the development of the war of liberation, he deeply felt the importance of studying Ge Yu's theory. In order to learn Marxism-Leninism well, especially the original works, he learned Russian with amazing perseverance through a little English he learned at school.
After the liberation of Shanghai, he read the magazine Translation, which was reissued not long ago, and saw the comments on the Bo Gu Declaration. Based on his own experience in reading the Chinese, English and Russian versions of Das Kapital, he wrote an article about the gains and losses of several versions, combined with the version of Qiao Mu proofreading introduced from Hong Kong at that time. He also pointed out in detail the differences between Engels' revised English version and the original text, and made a preliminary study. Because he had not studied German at that time, he wrote to some famous scholars to ask some questions. Shortly after the article was sent for translation, he received a reply encouraging him to continue writing. So he wrote another article, both of which were translated and published.
At the end of 1949, Wu Guoying was admitted to the Translation Bureau of the General Administration of Publication of the Central People's Government. I started with Russian translation in the translation office. Later, when he worked in the editorial department of Translation Monthly, he got a lot of teaching about translation work and translation theory from the editor-in-chief Comrade Dong. In addition to reviewing some translated manuscripts, I also edit and write the manuscripts of Translation Bulletin. In less than two years, I have written nearly 20 articles for Briefing, some commenting on the translation of books and some talking about translation theory. He introduced the translation theory of the Soviet Union and sorted out the translation theories of Lu Xun and Qu Qiubai.
Besides his daily work, he also does some writing in translation schools in his spare time. 195 1 published in "New Construction", the chronology of important works of Marx and Engels was written at the request of Tao Yong. When Beijing Library held an exhibition commemorating the 70th anniversary of Marx's death, it also reprinted this chronology into a booklet.
1953, People's Publishing House prepared to publish some singles of Lenin's works in order to cooperate with the study of A Concise Course on the History of the Communist Party of China (Bolshevik). Although these translations have been published in Yan 'an and other places, in order to update the translation or further improve the quality of the translation, it is necessary to revise the Complete Works of Lenin according to the fourth edition of Russian. Wu Guoying proofread more than a dozen books, such as Lenin's Letter to the Rural Poor, On Trade Unions, The Present Situation and Loki's Mistakes, Left-leaning Naivety and Petty Bourgeois, On Grain Tax, Notes of Political Commentators, Stalin's Questions and Answers to Racine, and supplemented the translation of Re-discussion on Social Democracy of our Party. In the process of translation and proofreading, he himself read a lot of classic works and further understood Marxism-Leninism.
In the following years, he specialized in editing and processing Marxist-Leninist classics. At that time, we didn't have the strength to publish the complete works of Marx and Engels and Lenin immediately. The leaders of People's Publishing House decided to cooperate with the Compilation Bureau to translate and proofread a number of important classic works and publish a single book before the complete works came out. In this way, he was responsible for editing and translating some classic works. Including On American Civil War, Letter to Americans, Marx and Engels on Spanish Revolution, Marx's Chronicle of Indian History, Morgan's Digest of Ancient Society, Various Forms before Capitalism Production, Kovalevski's Commune Land Ownership and Its Disintegration: The Result of Direct Production, Doctoral Dissertation, Engels' German Movement to Defend the Imperial Constitution, etc. There are more than 20 kinds of "Outline of the First Volume", such as The History of Primitive Christianity, Criticizing the Draft Program of alford, Essays on the Labor Banner and Das Kapital, some of which are his own books from topic selection to soliciting contributions. These translations are from English, Russian and German, with different translation levels. In fact, many translations are almost always checked from the beginning. Although social leaders think that the translation of manuscripts can be completed through "reading through", Wu Guoying thinks that the translation of classic works is always not easy, so he always tries his best to improve the quality of translation, taking pains, preferring to spend more time on his own rather than letting go easily.
He didn't shy away from "gnawing at bones" at work. For example, when I first arrived at People's Publishing House, the translation of the four-volume Correspondence of Marx and Engels was not very good, so it was difficult to improve the quality of translation. Wu Guoying volunteered to take this task, and Chen Yuan, director of the second editorial office, assigned him an assistant to help him make the index at the back of the book. Although the translation of this book is not good enough, it is the first book with a name index after liberation.
In recent years, he also used his spare time to translate seven book reviews written by Engels for the first volume of Das Kapital, which were first published in New Construction and later included in the people's edition of the Outline of Engels' Das Kapital Volume I; Karl Marx translated from the Encyclopedia of the Soviet Union (published by People's Publishing House1955); Co-translation of Historical Materialism on the Role of Geographical Environment in Historical Development (published by Sanlian Bookstore, 1954). In order to study Das Kapital, Rosenthal's Dialectics in Marx's Das Kapital and other books. He originally wanted to criticize modern bourgeois philosophy with Marxism-Leninism, so he translated Wittgenstein's On Logical Philosophy (published by the Commercial Press 1964, reprinted by 1985, and included in the Chinese Translation of World Famous Works). He also participated in the accidental publication of Selected Works of Lenin.
Plekhanov's Letter Without an Address was one of the 30 books published by the Central Committee at that time. The leader of the club gave him the job of processing and sorting out the book. Before starting the specific work, the leaders of the club gave Wu Tongying a letter written by Comrade Hu Qiaomu about some problems in Cao's translation. Hu Qiaomu put forward important suggestions on the editing of this book, not only put forward specific methods, but also pointed out that the overall spirit of doing a good job in publishing is to be responsible for readers and to serve the people. After reading this letter, Wu Guoying pondered how to make a good article to meet the requirements of readers. This requires breaking superstition, emancipating the mind, not copying, and making a translation suitable for our needs from the perspective of Marxism. In this way, a lot of work must be done by yourself, and the postscript and index of the original book can only solve some problems. Moreover, the materials cited in this book involve philosophy, aesthetics, anthropology, archaeology and ethnology. Not only requires editors to have a wide range of knowledge; A lot of verification work is needed. There are many difficulties before us. His first thought is to let our translation surpass the foreign version. Our version does not conform to the original version. First, add translator's comments in the editing and proofreading process. The editor's notes in 1956 Russian single article are all re-examined and partially rewritten. In addition, quotations without source and some indirect quotations in the original text are also noted. Second, the index was re-processed. As a result, the name index alone earned 34 more people than the original (the income of the original was 12 1). Third, unify the translation of names and make a comparison table of place names, ethnic, tribal names and proper names. Fourthly, the back notes of the original book are also sorted out. Also added some manuscripts of plekhanov.
It is very troublesome to find out the source of quotations not indicated in the original text. For this reason, Wu Guoying often works late into the night, and doesn't even know Sunday. Sometimes it takes a lot of time and energy to get nothing, and some of them are impossible to find. With extensive knowledge, he drew inferences and found relevant information; Others went to many libraries, consulted many encyclopedia dictionaries, and searched for the needed information step by step.
By using several different versions of collating, he found that it is very dangerous to be superstitious about foreigners, and foreigners may not be 100% safe to do their own things. In the original Russian version, English version and French version, not all the information about their country is known and has not been carefully studied.
1964 Comrade Hu Qiaomu wrote to Comrade Wang after reading the address-free letter published by People's Publishing House, expressing deep satisfaction with his work, saying that he was deeply moved by his spirit of being conscientious and responsible, not afraid of difficulties and troubles, and not blindly following foreign countries or authorities. "This is the embodiment of self-reliance, hard work, enthusiasm and the spirit of striving for the upper reaches in editing work. ..... I very much hope that his spirit can be studied by all editors in the whole editing work, not just the classic works designated by the central government. ……"
Unexpectedly, this good thing made him be labeled as "Hu Qiaomu Black Pen" during the Cultural Revolution. For this reason, he was criticized by the rebels, robbed of his property and tortured to death several times.
After the most turbulent years passed, Wu Guoying returned to Beijing from ultra-leftwing. The first thing the club leaders gave him was to revise a concise course on the history of the Communist Party of China (Bolshevik). He felt that he was greener, so he seized every opportunity to learn. Due to physical injury during the "Cultural Revolution", I was overworked in the cadre school for three years. After returning to Beijing, I was nervous at work and contracted hepatitis on 1975. Later, the doctor also found out that he had a herniated intervertebral disc, and the doctor wondered why he found it so late. This disease can't be sedentary. Years of discomfort forced him not to work as hard as before, but he still produced an 800,000-word translation of Selected Works of plekhanov's Philosophy by Cao, and it took 10 months to revise some translations. Because the translator suffered from serious eye diseases in his later years, this manuscript left many problems, and Wu Guoying devoted a lot of effort to it. During this period, he also edited and processed many original or classic works of Marxism-Leninism, such as Correspondence between Marx and Engels and Russian Political Activists, Research on Marx-< Thought, etc.
Before retiring, he also translated Luna Charles Key's aesthetic prose in his spare time. In addition, he also processed two manuscripts of Lenin Chronicle, each with 700,000 words. Many books are short comments or annotations of Lenin, which are not included in the complete works. Although the translation has been revised, there are still many problems left, and the task of editing and processing is very heavy. Although this book will not be published for the time being because of a small number of subscriptions, his hard work in spreading Marxism will always be praised by future generations. [2]