Foreword 序言2

World war I was now over. China had sent some 150,000laborers to france, and Yutang accepted a job at the American YMCA to teach the laborers to read and write. The couple moved to Le Creusot, a small town in france. When they had saved some money, Yutang had taught himself germany and they went to the university of Jena in germany because the living standard there was lower. Yutang took courses and transferred credit to receive his master’s from Harvard. To the dean of Harvard graduate school he wrote in 1920, “I don’t wish to plead for any special leniency in giving me the degree. Now am I going to be intellectually arrested myself after I should get the degree. It si for the reason of great practical utility that I wish to have this certificate. I believe that the Harvard degree will make my progress through the german university much quicker and easier.” In 1923, he received his ph.D in philology from Leipzig university, and returned to china.

 

二戰結束了，中國向法國派遣了大約150，000的勞工。語堂在美國的YMCA接受了一份工作，到法國教勞工們讀書寫字。夫婦二人搬到了一個叫拉庫舍特的法國小鎮。當他們積攢了一些錢的時候，語堂已經自學了德語，他們就來到了德國的耶拿大學，因為那裏的生活水準更低一些。語堂在這裏修課並通過學分轉換從哈佛拿到了碩士學位。在給哈佛研究生院院長的心中，他寫道”我並不希望請求您給我特殊的照顧，使我拿到學位。而如果我得到這個學位，我也不會就變得對學術著了迷。我盼望這個學位隻是因為它有很現實的功用。我相信哈佛的學位會使我能夠更快更容易的在德國的大學裏獲得進展。“1923年，從洛佩茲大學獲得語言學博士學位後，他返回了中國。

The country was in turmoil. Politically, china was in the grip of feudal warlords who fought one another incessantly. Yutang, a professor in the English department of Beida, wrote articles and criticized the corrupt and ineffective government. The feuding warlords fought on. Duan Qirui ordered the arrest of some 50 professors and newspapermen who criticized the government. Yutang’s name was on the list. Two editors who were arrested were shot in the same night.

 

國家正處於暴亂之中。中國在政治上處於封建軍閥的掌握之中，他們相互討伐，征戰不已。語堂，作為北大英語係的教授，著文聲討政府的腐敗和無能。仇視的軍閥報複了。段祺瑞下令逮捕大約50名大學教授和新聞人士。語堂的名字也在其中。有兩位編輯被捕後，當晚便被槍斃了。

 

But now my parents had two draughts, my elder sister and myself. We left for Xiamen, where father joined the faculty of Xiamen University as dean of the college of arts and letters. But university politics made it impossible for him to stay on, and a year later, he joined the ministry of foreign affairs in the wuhan government, because he admired foreign minister chen yuanren, whom he had known in Beijing. When the wuhan government was toppled in 1927, father quit his job, and we moved to Shanghai.

 

然而那時父母已經有了兩個女兒，我姐姐和我。我們離身前往廈門。父親加入了廈門大學，成了文學藝術學院的院長。但學校的政治形勢卻使他無法立足，一年後他加入了武漢政府的外交部，因為他對身為外交部長的陳元任心懷仰慕，他們在北平時就認識了。1927年武漢政府被推翻了，父親辭職，我們全家搬到了上海。

Here, he began to write the enormously successful Kaiming  English Books，a series that was adopted as textbooks for middle schools. With his founding of the analects bimonthly in 1932 in shanghai, father made his reputation in china. The magazine specialized in humor and satire, but it was father’s contributions that most captured the readers. Poking fun at government officials, he once said “although you are an official, you still look like a man.”

 

在上海，他開始編寫開明叢書。這套書取得了巨大的成功，被中學采納為教材。自1932年父親創辦了雙月刊“文萃”之後，父親在中國成了名人。該雜誌擅長幽默和諷刺，但父親的撰稿才是最吸引讀者的東西。一次在取笑政府高官的時候，父親說道“盡管你是個官老爺，你仍然有人的模樣。”

 

(幾本雜誌都是史上有名的，不應該生譯，但暫時敷衍了事)

 

Father’s lacerating wit earned him the reputation of enfant terrible and accolade “master of humor”. In 1934 and 1935, he started two more magazines, this human world and the cosmic wind. Also at this time, father was writing an English column called the little critic which appeared in china critic magazine, as well as editing a Chinese dictionary in the style of the concise oxford dictionary. At the same time, he was translating English works into Chinese, such as the biography of henrik Ibsen and george Bernard shaw’s Pygmalion. And he was translating Chinese into English, the most notable work of which was qing dynasty author shen fu’s six chapters of a floating life, which was published in bilingual form in shanghai in 1935. the author wrote about the idyllic life he led with his wife yun, whom father described in a preface as “one of the loveliest of women in Chinese literature”. The story and the translation received wide attention.

 

父親機智犀利的風格為他贏得了“機智壞小子”的稱號，並被譽為幽默大師。1934年和1935年他又創辦了兩本雜誌，“人間世”和“宇宙風”。 同時，他還在為中國評論家雜誌主持一個名為“小評論家”的英語專欄，按照簡明牛津辭典的風格編纂一部漢語辭典；翻譯英語著作，如亨利克易卜生的傳記和肖伯納的皮格梅隆；並將漢語名著譯作英語，其中最著名的是他翻譯的清朝作家沈複的浮生六記，該書1935年以中英對照的方式在上海出版。原著作者在書中記錄了他和他的夫人雲的田園詩式的生活。父親曾在序言中把雲稱為”中國文學中最可愛的女子之一“。原著及譯作都受到了廣泛的注意。

 

Father’s little critic essays caught the attention of pearl s buk, who was living in china, and whose novel the good earth had won the Pulitzer prize. One evening the two writers met. They had been speaking of foreign writers in cina, when father suddenly said, I should like to write a book telling exactly what I feel about china.

 

父親在小評論家專欄發表的小品文引起了身在中國的賽珍珠的注意。賽珍珠曾以小說“良土“獲得普利策獎。終於在一個夜晚，兩位作家見麵了。他們談論到身在中國的外國作家的時候，父親突然說，我該寫本書闡述我個人對中國的看法。

 

“you are the one to do it,” Mrs. Buck replied enthusiastically.

 

“你很適合這項工作”，賽珍珠熱切的回答說。