Cheng Zhenqiu, an expert on Chinese-English translation, feels that he deserves leisure time and is free to do more exercise now. He returned to retirement two years ago after the mammoth task of compiling the "New Age Chinese-English Dictionary" was completed.

On January 3 this year, the Commercial Press held a formal birthday feast to celebrate Cheng's 85th birthday in the Songhe Restaurant (whose name means "pine and crane" - both symbols of longevity in China) in the Jianguo Hotel.

Yang Deyan, the Commercial Press chief executive, expressed his deep gratitude to the senior expert for his commitment to the dictionary, which was published in August 2000 by the Beijing-based publishing house.

The dictionary that he helped compile, however, is only one of Cheng's works of the past decades. He worked on the translation of innumerable important documents, including those from the Communist Party's national congresses; documents of National People's Congress sessions; and the Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. At the same time, he became a close-up witness of many crucial historic events that have happened in China over the past decades.

Teacher to translator

When Cheng finished his studies abroad - funded by the indemnity for the 1900 war (known as the Boxer indemnity in the West) - and returned to China in 1949, he had no idea that he would assume a lifelong career as a translator in the field of international affairs. What he studied at Oxford University's Corpus Christi College was British political theory.

However, with his learning set in a Western theoretical framework, he found it hard to find a job in China related to his major. As a result, instead of pursuing the career of a statesman or diplomat, Cheng started his professional life by joining the Foreign Affairs School (now the Beijing Foreign Studies University) as an English teacher.

"The decision wasn't hard for me to make at that time," Cheng said. "Every young man was eager to contribute to the construction of the New China with whatever he could do."

During his first three years at the Foreign Affairs School, Cheng was often asked to serve as an interpreter for various Chinese delegations of young people, students and athletes. He travelled to a lot of European countries many times. "Those occasions gave me great opportunities to temper myself, and improve my translating ability," said Cheng.

As his reputation as a good interpreter rose, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs began to ask him to do some written translations of diplomatic documents and letters. That was the beginning of his switch from an interpreter to a translator.

"A qualified interpreter could be produced after a four-year undergraduate education. But it takes 10 more years to make a qualified translator," he asserted.

Before his late retirement at the age of 72, Cheng had worked in the field of Chinese-English translation for about 30 years.

Unforgettable translation

Perhaps the most unforgettable experience in his career was the translation of the selected works of Mao Zedong. The task of translating it was taken very seriously.

A group of expert translators would sit around a table, each with a copy of the original Chinese text in their hand. One of them would slow read out a translation sentence by sentence. Anyone could interrupt the reading if he thought there was a problem. "In this way, we were able to be strictly faithful to the original text, and accumulated many experiences during those five years," Cheng said.

In his late 70s, Cheng accepted an assignment from the Commercial Press to continue to supervise the compilation of the "New Age Chinese-English Dictionary," which started in 1989 but was then in abeyance due to the death of its former chief compiler Wu Jingrong in 1995.

"It seems only natural for a language expert to compile in his mellow years a dictionary, which is both a consummation and a ready fruit of his lifelong study and practice," Cheng said.

However, the compilation of a dictionary is by no means an easy task to accomplish, especially when for a comprehensive dictionary.

"One of our emphases during the compilation was to make the dictionary encyclopedic. The entries should reflect the overall features of contemporary Chinese society," Cheng said.

The dictionary was completed and published in August 2000. It was applauded for the comprehensiveness of its 120,000 entries. The number of entries was almost 80 per cent more than its predecessor, the "Chinese-English Dictionary" - the first ever Commercial Press Chinese-English dictionary, which was published in 1979 with Wu Jingrong as chief compiler.

It took Cheng five years to go over the more than 9 million characters and 2,000 pages of the dictionary. The onerous undertaking of compiling the dictionary could have put his health under strain. But Cheng just laughed off any concern as he recollected that period of his life.

"I was kind of a sportsman in my youth, playing football and tennis most of the time. So, when I started the work, I was confident that I could count on the energy and strength accumulated over the years. But, of course, I have to exercise again and pay a lot of attention to my health now," he said.

Cultural bridge builders

While being interviewed, the senior translation expert expressed his deep concern that the profession of Chinese-English translation is not popular among the young people because the translation jobs are largely under-paid nowadays.

"A translator needs much more time to become qualified than an interpreter. And, having become qualified, he has to work behind the scenes," Cheng said.

Good translators are playing a more and more important role in an age when China is eager to be known by the outside world, while the hieroglyphic-like Chinese characters remain a huge obstacle for the dissemination of Chinese voices.

"Literature is what suffers most from this obstacle," said Cheng. Due to overseas translators' unfamiliarity with the cultural context, one crucial reason for the relatively faint voice of Chinese writers in the international literary world is that their works rarely have a chance to be translated into foreign languages or be translated without much of their original charm being lost.

According to Cheng, things are beginning to change in the field of international relations at least and translators are receiving more recognition than before. But much remains to be done. "It is our hope that Chinese-English translators will attract more young professionals in the years to come," Cheng said.

(China Daily January 14, 2003)