Chapter 35 About the translation and publication of this book

About the translation and publication of a book. In the late period of the "Cultural Revolution", I taught English for two educated youths who returned to the city to join the queue. The textbook I used was "Animal Farm".I still use the old-fashioned translation method to teach English. Every day after class, students have to translate the reading materials into Chinese.The translation exercises of these two students, which I revised into chapters, can also be counted as the first translation of "Animal Farm". After the "Compilation Reference" was published, a publishing house once took this translation manuscript, but there was no follow-up, and the manuscript was not even returned to me.This is to be expected.Even if Guangdong Huacheng Publishing House has already published it, the first edition is only used as an internal reference book. When it was reprinted in the late 1980s, although it was already available for sale in the market, the print run was pitifully small, making it difficult for readers to buy.In the blink of an eye, more than ten years passed by, and it was already 1996.In the spring or summer of this year, Leshan told me that he signed a contract with a certain publishing house to edit a two-volume collection of "Orwell's Collected Works". novel, and.At this time there was already a translation in Shanghai, but Brother Dong still wanted me to translate it again, so I naturally obeyed.A year later, "Collected Works" was published, but only one volume was released, and the next volume of novels agreed in the contract was canceled for no apparent reason.This is the status quo of the publishing industry in our country, and I have nothing to say.I just made a few complaints about this in an article mourning Leshan's death.

In the past three or four years, several publishing houses have contacted me, intending to publish my translation.One of them has signed a manuscript contract with me and paid the manuscript fee in advance, but for some reason, the book has never been published.Shanghai Translation Publishing House, on the other hand, republished it in 2003. After obtaining the consent of the publishing house that signed a contract with me, it included my translation and published it as a collection. I am delighted that this little book is now finally available in volume form.It's not how I value my translations, seeing my name on the cover of the book.What I hope to see is that this book can be widely circulated and easily purchased in bookstores so that more people can read it.An unhappy history, whether it happened in this country or another, is over after all.But if many readers can read it in the book, these things will remain in people's memory and serve as a warning, preventing us from making mistakes and repeating the same mistakes on the road to revolution.

Not long ago, someone downloaded an article from a foreign website and sent it to me.The author is an American, and he is probably also an avid reader. In the article, the author compares the current situation in the United States with what happened on the farm.He found that many organizations and associations in the United States—left and right, trade unions and the Ku Klux Klan, even political parties or the government—are using the tricks of Napoleon and his gang to deceive and fool their subordinates, members, voters and the masses.Intimidation and abuse, alarmist talk, secretly amending regulations, indiscriminately writing empty promises, shirking responsibility, and assigning responsibility for big and small crimes to others... These dirty tricks are all widely used in American political circles, and they are very similar to the US.If the author's argument can be established, today's America has become a modern advanced animal farm.It seems that this book has not lost its practical significance.