Abstract
Silang tanmu 四郎探母 (Fourth Son Visits His Mother) is a famous traditional play at the very heart of the Jingju 京劇 (a.k.a., Peking opera) repertoire that has been banned from performance in both the PRC and the ROC but that has nevertheless remained a perennial favorite impossible to keep off the stage. This paper examines three translations and one set of subtitles for the play and discusses their differences with particular regard to their intended purposes and audiences: two were prepared to help non-Chinese students learn to perform the play or elements of Chinese indigenous theater, one was prepared to help Jingju and its classic repertoire become better known outside China, and the last is a set of subtitles added to a video of a TV broadcast of a performance of the play that was posted online.
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Notes
- 1.
The name of the guide is Dumen jilüe 都門紀略 (Concise record of the capital) and that of the theater section is “Cichang 詞場.” For a typeset version of the section, see Fu (2010, 2: 907–914).
- 2.
On Li Shizhong, who had his own theater troupes, and the collection, see Huang (1989). A scan of the copy of Liyuan jicheng originally collected by Nakasawa Kikuya 長澤規矩也 (1902–1980), and now held by the University of Tokyo, is available at http://shanben.ioc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/.
- 3.
Basically all of these sets included Silang tanmu. An example would be a late Qing set titled Huitu Jingdu Sanqing ban Jingdiao 繪圖京都三慶班京調 (Illustrated Capital Sanqing Troupe capital tunes). The Sanqing Troupe was one of the four Anhui troupes and did not disband until 1898. A scan of the copy originally collected by Nakasawa Kikuya and now held by the University of Tokyo is available at http://shanben.ioc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ (search under the title given to the entire set).
- 4.
While the play was not among the twenty-six plays banned by name in the early years of the PRC, constant criticism of the play kept it off the stage until the Reform Period, with the short exception of the Hundred Flowers Period (1956–1957).
- 5.
The first book to discuss Jingju playscripts as literature, Yan (2005), is less than twenty years old.
- 6.
- 7.
For example, see Baller (1911).
- 8.
- 9.
A couple of Kunqu 崑曲 (Kun opera) plays are included. At the time in China, it was common for Jingju actors to perform a number of Kunqu plays.
- 10.
Arlington also wrote The Chinese Drama from the Earliest Times until Today (New York: B. Blom, 1930).
- 11.
Acton can be taken as a representative of another segment of Westerners in China at that time. He figures in Mungello (2012).
- 12.
The title of the first one is The Butterfly Dream: Chinese Classical Theater, and was produced at Creative Arts Television in Kent, Connecticut; the second is titled Asian Concepts of Stage Discipline and Western Actor Training, and was produced by Michigan State University in 1980 (it is also about half an hour). Both are available in the Alexander Street Press database.
- 13.
Scott (1962) described how he enlisted the aid of two Hong Kong Jingju professionals he knew to help train young actors to perform The Butterfly Dream in 1961 under the sponsorship of the Institute of Advanced Studies, but is pretty critical of how the two professionals actually performed the duties requested of them during the workshop.
- 14.
Scott’s translation of Silang tanmu includes three photos of an actor dressed as Princess Iron Fan, one of which is identified as Zhang Junqiu (here and elsewhere Scott’s use of the older Wade-Giles romanization system has been converted to pinyin); the other two are also almost certainly of him too.
- 15.
For an overview of Scott’s career, on which I have relied pretty heavily for detail, especially in this paragraph, see Liu (2011). Besides the three volumes of translations, Scott also published The Classical Theatre of China (first published in 1957), Mei Lan-fang, Leader of the Pear Garden (first published in 1959), and Actors Are Madmen: Notebook of a Theatregoer in China (1982).
- 16.
The illustrations in the other two volumes of Traditional Chinese Plays take the form of line drawings. All three included posed and stage photos of actors in costume.
- 17.
On the copyright page for each of the three volumes, there is a statement that inquiries about “performing rights” should be sent to Scott himself. The one for the first volume claims that the two plays in it are “fully protected as drama.”
- 18.
The exception is Shiwu guan 十五貫 (Fifteen strings of cash), in volume two, whose newly revised version Scott got to see performed in 1956.
- 19.
See Scott (1967, 149). The appendix appears on pages 149–159.
- 20.
These conventions are presented as the very “soul” of Jingju in Li (2010). The author of that book, Li Ruru, is the daughter of a famous Jingju actress and playwright, Li Yuru 李玉茹 (1924–2008) and the step-daughter of the most famous spoken drama (huaju 話劇) playwright, Cao Yu 曹禺 (1910–1996).
- 21.
Xikao was published in 40 installments from 1912 to 1925 by Zhonghua Tushu Guan 中華圖書館 of Shanghai. Silang tanmu appears in the second installment, which appeared in 1913.
- 22.
- 23.
Inexplicably, Scott (1967, vii) dates the edition to 1937, when the royalty page clearly says that the first edition appeared in the following year.
- 24.
The stage direction appears right before Yanhui begins his first, quite long and slow, aria. See page four of the pagination for the playscript proper (which does include a dramatis personae on the first two pages) in Liu (1938; Liu’s edition has almost 80 pages of paratextual material before the playscript proper), and Scott ([1967], 35). Already in Liu’s time, the practice of having underlings bring out tea for you to drink onstage (yinchang 飲場) had become controversial as Western stage realism and its reluctance to break the “fourth wall” had become influential in China; by Scott’s time the practice had long vanished from the stage. To deal with that, Scott put the passage in the past tense and prefaced it with the phrase, “In the past.”
- 25.
On his training and career, see Liu (2013).
- 26.
Although Yang wrote about the Colorado and Hawai’i productions of the play, he does not seem to have ever published the script(s) for them. He did publish both English and Chinese versions of a play he wrote based on the story of Yan Xijiao, the female lead of Wulong yuan (see Yang 2000). No arias are sung in either version, but they do make use of elements from Jingju and feature talking prop persons who announce things and try to explain elements of traditional Chinese theater to the audience. The book includes English and Chinese reviews of the student production of the play.
- 27.
See Wichmann (1991).
- 28.
For an example of an article whose headline uses this nickname, see Li and Liu (2002).
- 29.
The first half of the book was devoted to Wichmann’s English version and the second half to the original Chinese version. See Wichmann (1986). While this publication only credits Wichmann for the translation, the unpublished versions of the scripts that I have seen always credit a co-translator. Helen Heyue Wang is credited as the co-translator for Silang tanmu.
- 30.
I first got to know Wichmann in 1986, when I was doing thesis research in Nanjing, when the system for quarantining foreigners that assured that we slept and ate in the same buildings facilitated meetings among us. I am very grateful to her for sharing a wide variety of materials with me over the years, including the performance script for Silang tanmu and a video-tape of one of the performances of it.
- 31.
Wichmann prefers not to capitalize Jingju. I capitalize it because the “jing” is short for Beijing, a proper noun.
- 32.
The grid does not appear in the original translation; I have added it to keep the vertical columns aligned.
- 33.
In extant playscripts for the play, the opener takes two different forms, one like the one in the performance script: 身困幽州, 思老母, 常掛心頭 (although it is more common for the first character to be bei 被 [marks a passive construction] rather than shen [actually, since the performance text does not include Chinese characters, and I have never seen a manuscript or printed edition that had a character pronounced shen in the place of bei, I can only guess; of the possibilities, 身 seems best]; other variants include gurou 骨肉 [flesh and blood] for laomu), and an entirely different form that shares no characters with the first, Jinjing suo wutong, chang tan kong sui, yizhen feng 金井鎖梧桐, 長歎空隨,一陣風 (editions with percussion patterns notated make clear that although the number of characters in the two versions is the same, the scansion differs). Scott (1967, 34), translates the second version as “The wutong tree locked in a golden courtyard,/A long sigh carried away on the breeze.” Oddly enough, the earliest datable edition, in Liyuan jicheng, kind of smashes the two together, taking its first four characters from the second version, the fifth from the first one, the ninth from the second one (where it appears as the seventh character), and the last three also from the second version. Taiwan editions that tried to deal with the issue of Yanhui living on after being captured so the play could be publicly performed made changes such as switching out si laomu in the first version for jia guo hen 家國恨 ([I] resent [what happened to] family and nation). See Xiuding Silang tanmu 修訂四郎探母 (Revised edition of Silang tanmu; Taibei: Jiaoyu bu Zhongguo geju gailiang yanjiu weiyuan hui, 1955) and Silang tanmu 四郎探母 (Taibei: Liming wenhua, 1979). Both of those editions made more substantial additions/changes to the play to make it clear that Yanhui has remained loyal and has continued to keep the best interests of China in mind.
- 34.
The performance script for Wichmann’s translation of Feng huan chao has these kinds of stage directions but they are absent or greatly curtailed in the printed version. For instance, the stage directions in the performance version before the first character speaks takes up 255 words, while the printed version only has 37.
- 35.
The last two figures are based on the musical notation for the play in Jingju qupu jicheng 京劇曲譜集成 (Compendium of Jingju plays with musical notation), 10 vols. (Shanghai: Shanghai wenyi, 1992–1998), 8: 9.
- 36.
Unlike Scott, who with the one exception of Shiwu guan, only translated plays not associated with PRC policy and performance practices, Wichmann’s plays have been chosen by her Nanjing collaborators and have represented a wide spectrum of a specifically PRC repertoire, including one model opera from the Cultural Revolution, with the exception that the eight full-length plays do not reflect the fact that a majority of the items being performed are short plays or extracted scenes (zhezi xi 折子戲) but, on the other hand, parts of some of those eight plays appear on programs as extracted scenes (in the case of Silang tanmu, the first scene, which includes Yanhui’s self-introduction and his revelation of his true identity to Iron Mirror and persuasion of her to borrow the arrow of command for him, is often performed alone under the title of Zuogong 坐宮 [Sitting in the palace]). Scott has little patience with criticism of Silang tanmu for ideological reasons, and instead gives this kind of rationale for interest in the play: “To the old-time theatergoers this was a play that provided excellent opportunities for displays of technical virtuosity in most of the principal roles..., thereby providing audiences with full measure of entertainment” (1967, 24). Wichmann seems to attempt to deflect criticism of the play by, in essence, recognizing the problem by adding a subtitle to her English title for the play, Silang Visits His Mother/Love and Loyalty.
- 37.
Zhou (2014) needs almost 400 pages to cover its topic (PRC exchange performances abroad of Chinese indigenous theater, 1949–2012).
- 38.
For a brief CCTV report on the ceremony, see “‘Zhongguo Jingju baibu jingdian Yingyi xilie’ xinshu fabu hui zai Jing juxing 10/27/2012” “中國京劇百部經典英譯系列” 新書發布會在京舉行 20121027 (New book release ceremony held in Beijing for Zhongguo Jingju baibu jingdian Yingyi xilie, October 27, 2012), http://xiqu.cctv.com/2012/10/27/VIDE1355"176635516766.shtml, accessed May 7, 2021.
- 39.
She also holds an appointment as a dean at Beijing waiguo yu daxue 北京外國語大學 (Beijing Foreign Studies University).
- 40.
The motivation for this change is neither clear nor addressed in anything I have seen. It is true that in popular discourse in the PRC, waiyu 外語 (foreign language) is often used as a synonym for English.
- 41.
The Chinese title for this section is actually “Juben wenxue” 劇本文學 (literature of the text), despite the fact that the section never treats the libretto as literature.
- 42.
Because the cipher notation is more compact than the five-line notation, the two very quickly get out of sync with each other, a problem that keeps getting worse, so that in the end the cipher notation finishes three pages before the five-line notation.
- 43.
This online posting mentions this question and includes the quote from Sun Ping.
- 44.
The only change between the version that appeared in the first batch and the Silang edition is the marking of the decease of one of the members by the widespread convention in Chinese publications of using black lines to form a rectangle enclosing his name.
- 45.
Wichmann also appears, as a member of the committee on the art of Jingju, on the page listing the committees and their members. I understand from her that she has not actually been consulted about matters concerning the series.
- 46.
“CCS bids farewell to Daniel Tschudi,” https://manoa.hawaii.edu/chinesestudies/features/ccs-bids-farewell-to-daniel-tschudi/, accessed May 7, 2021. The official date of his retirement was August 1, 2019.
- 47.
While it actually is quite rare to show either Chinese or English titles over the stage instead of on either side of it, I here follow the common practice of reserving “subtitles” to refer to titles displayed (primarily) at the bottom of the screen of films or TV shows, and “surtitles” to refer to the titles used for live performances.
- 48.
Additional information, such the names of the aria-types (banshi 板式) for the arias or the names of actors and the characters that they are performing can be displayed in the Chinese subtitles for TV broadcasts of Jingju performances, but none of that kind of material appears in the broadcast Chau subtitled. In it, information about the troupe and the actors is given in the recording of the broadcast before the performance starts. Suffice it to say that the troupe and actors were first-class.
- 49.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1Y55WqXd-IqV0KMzdJRUyA, accessed May 7, 2021.
- 50.
It is obvious from Chau’s notes to the postings of the subtitled performance broadcasts that the work was done as an amateur and not as a professional. The industry of subtitling has come up with all kinds of recommendations/rules/guidelines on such things as how many characters should be shown on screen at once, but I don’t see any indication that Chau is familiar with them, or with subtitling conventions such as hyphens to preface new speakers, so I will not be evaluating Chau’s work from that point of view.
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Rolston, D.L. (2022). How Purpose and Function Has Affected Translation and Subtitling of the Jingju Play Silang tanmu. In: Qi, L., Tobias, S. (eds) Encountering China’s Past. New Frontiers in Translation Studies. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0648-0_2
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