孟加拉語詩人、諾貝爾文學獎獲得者拉賓德拉納特·泰戈爾(Rabindranath Tagore)去世80多年後，在亞洲仍然擁有眾多擁躉。在印度與孟加拉國以外，他的文學遺產或許在中國是被繼承發揚得最好的，幾十年來，他的作品一直在中學課本之中。
這個月，為了紀念泰戈爾155周年誕辰，人民出版社將出版《泰戈爾全集》，這是他的全部作品首次由孟加拉語直接翻譯成中文，是一個翻譯家團隊工作了將近六年的成果。
但是在此之前，作家馮唐翻譯的另一個風格大膽的泰戈爾《飛鳥集》(Stray Birds)版本引發了批評的風暴，已經令泰戈爾成為爭論的焦點。爭論過於激烈，浙江文藝出版社只得將該書下架。
「大多數中國人從小覺得泰戈爾是溫和浪漫的，都是星星啊、花園啊、花朵啊，」馮唐近期在自己北京的工作室里接受採訪時說。「我的翻譯讓很多人覺得不是他們心目中的泰戈爾，他們小時候從教科書里讀到的泰戈爾被顛覆了。」
人民出版社副總編於青說：「在所有一流外國作家中，泰戈爾在中國是最受歡迎，譯介最廣的。」
「和托爾斯泰、馬克·吐溫等受歡迎的外國作家不同，泰戈爾曾經訪問中國，和中國當代文學的先驅們相處過，」於先生說。
1913年，泰戈爾成為首位獲得諾貝爾文學獎的非西方作家，正如潘卡傑·米什拉(Pankaj Mishra)在2012年的著作《來自帝國的廢墟》(From the Ruins of Empire)中寫到的，他也是「在一個近乎完全由西方機構與個人統治的知識分子小環境中，唯一來自亞洲的孤獨聲音」。在當年，茅盾、鄭振鐸與中國共產黨的創始人之一陳獨秀等成長中的年輕知識分子開始翻譯泰戈爾的作品，並陸續發表在各種中國雜誌上。
44歲的馮唐是通俗小說作家，他說自己一直在尋找一個翻譯項目，並且記得自己年輕時就曾經讀過《飛鳥集》中這些關於人與自然的短詩。
但是他的譯本於去年夏天出版不久之後，批評之聲就開始在網絡與中國新聞媒體上出現，其中包括共產黨的喉舌媒體《人民日報》。讀者與學者們眼裡指責馮唐褻瀆了這位受人愛戴的詩人。
文化評論家周黎明(Raymond Zhou)為《中國日報》(China Daily)撰文，稱馮唐的翻譯是「粗俗的自我寫照，充滿荷爾蒙的味道」，就連印度媒體也卷了進來，一個評論者說馮唐是在「嘲弄泰戈爾」。
《飛鳥集》中收錄了326首詩，馮唐的譯本和大多數早期譯者一樣，是基於英文版的，評論者們的怒火主要集中在其中三首詩上。其中一首是由泰戈爾本人翻譯為英文：「世界對着他的愛人，把他浩瀚的面具揭下了，他變小了，小如一首歌，小如一回永恆的接吻。」（鄭振鐸譯——譯註）。
然而馮唐將之翻譯為：「大千世界在情人面前解開褲襠，綿長如舌吻，纖細如詩行。」
馮唐仍然堅持自己的翻譯。
「我唯一的目的就是抓住泰戈爾詩中的美學，」他說。「當我翻譯時，我就是作家。我不需要知道語境。我只想儘可能自由地創作。」
儘管有這樣多的爭議，12月，浙江文藝出版社宣布將該書下架並重新審視其翻譯的決定令許多人更加震驚。該書是否會重新上架，目前尚不明確。 出版社在電話中拒絕對此發表評論。
「我認為這場爭論首先表明了泰戈爾在中國讀者心目中的特殊位置，」《泰戈爾全集》的主編及譯者之一董友忱說。「他以東方的情感進行創作，所以今天的中國人也能產生共鳴。」
當然，也有人認為，通過翻譯傳達泰戈爾作品中的精髓，可能根本就是一項近乎不可能的任務。
「當然，詩歌是出了名的難以翻譯，」1997年，阿瑪蒂亞·森(Amartya Sen)為《紐約書評》(The New York Review of Books)撰文稱。「任何能以孟加拉語原文閱讀泰戈爾詩歌的人都不會對任何譯本表示滿意的。」
本文最初發表於2016年2月8日。
翻譯：董楠
Tagore Translation Deemed Racy Is Pulled From Stores in China
By AMY QINFebruary 16, 2016More than 80 years after his death, Rabindranath Tagore, the Bengali poet and Nobel laureate, still has a huge following in Asia. Outside India and Bangladesh, perhaps nowhere is his legacy more alive than in China, where his works have been part of the middle-school curriculum for decades.
This month, to commemorate the 155th anniversary of his birth, the People’s Publishing House will release “The Complete Works of Tagore,” the first direct translation of his entire output from Bengali into Chinese. The project took a team of translators nearly six years.
But Tagore has also been at the center of a controversy here, after another, more racy new translation of some of his poems by the writer Feng Tang, called “Stray Birds,” set off a storm of criticism. The furor was so intense that the Zhejiang Wenyi Publishing House pulled the volume from stores.
“Most Chinese grew up thinking Tagore was mild and romantic, all stars, gardens and flowers,” Mr. Feng said in a recent interview in his Beijing studio. “So with my translation, many people felt like their Tagore, the Tagore from their childhood textbooks, had been challenged.”
Yu Qing, deputy chief editor of the People’s Publishing House, said, “In terms of the top foreign authors, Tagore may just be the most popular and most widely translated foreign writer in China.”
“Unlike other popular foreign authors here like Tolstoy or Mark Twain, Tagore actually visited China and spent time with the pioneers of contemporary Chinese literature,” Mr. Yu added.
As the first non-Westerner to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1913, Tagore was also the “lone voice from Asia in an intellectual milieu that was almost entirely dominated by Western institutions and individuals,” wrote Pankaj Mishra in his 2012 book, “From the Ruins of Empire.” Translations of the poet’s work by rising young intellectuals like Mao Dun, Zhang Zhenduo and Chen Duxiu, a co-founder of the Chinese Communist Party, began to appear in Chinese magazines.
The 44-year-old Mr. Feng, a popular novelist, said he had been looking for a translation project and remembered reading the collection of short poems about man and nature in “Stray Birds” when he was young.
But not long after his translation was published last summer, critiques began to appear online and in the Chinese news media, including People’s Daily, the Communist Party mouthpiece. Readers and scholars excoriated Mr. Feng for blaspheming the beloved poet.
The anger mostly focused on three of the 326 poems, all of which Mr. Feng, like most earlier translators, based on English versions. In one, which was translated into English by Tagore himself, the poet wrote: “The world puts off its mask of vastness to its lover. It becomes small as one song, as one kiss of the eternal.”
By contrast, Mr. Feng’s translation in Chinese reads: “The world unzipped his pants in front of his lover. Long as a French kiss, slim as a line of a poem.”
Mr. Feng continues to stand by his translation.
“My only intention was to capture the aesthetics of Tagore’s poems,” he said. “When I translate, I’m a writer. I don’t need to know the context. I just want to do things as freely and as creatively as possible.”
Even with the uproar, many were perhaps even more surprised by the announcement in December from the Zhejiang Wenyi Publishing House that it would halt sales of the book and review the translation. It is unclear whether the book will be returned to shelves. Reached by telephone, the company declined to comment.
“I think the fact that there was this controversy in the first place shows the special place Tagore holds in the hearts of Chinese readers,” said Dong Youchen, chief editor and translator of the “The Complete Works of Tagore.” “He wrote with an Eastern sensibility that Chinese people even today can connect with.”
Then again, some say conveying the essence of Tagore’s works through translation may simply be a near-impossible task.
“Poetry is, of course, notoriously difficult to translate,” Amartya Sen wrote in The New York Review of Books in 1997. “And anyone who knows Tagore’s poems in their original Bengali cannot feel satisfied with any of the translations.”
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