In Poland, there was such a writer: Anthony Burgess praised him as "the wisest, most erudite, and most humorous of the active writers of today"; Kurt Vonnegut praised him as "excellent in his ability to control language, imagination, or in the way he shapes tragic characters"; Liu Cixin said that he had a very remarkable imagination, which was truly unique; his science fiction works were used as philosophy textbooks; Sturgeon said that he was the science fiction writer with the widest readership in the world... He was Stanisław Lem, the brightest sci-fi titan in Polish literature.
September 12, 2021 is the 100th anniversary of the birth of the science fiction master, and the commemoration activities have begun around the world, and Poland has directly named 2021 the "Year of Lyme". Yilin Publishing House recently launched the first set of "Lyme Collections" in the world Chinese Simplified Chinese, including his six masterpieces: "Solaris Star", "Futurology Congress", "Voice of its Lord", "Invincible", "Fiasco", and "Eden". Among them, the Star of Solaris is a new translation, and the other five are the first translations. The birth of this set of "Lyme Anthology" showed the charm of this top science fiction writer to Chinese readers for the first time.
He single-handedly elevated Polish science fiction to the world
Stanisław Lem was a famous Polish writer and philosopher. Born in 1921 in Lviv, Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine) to a wealthy family of doctors. He worked as an auto mechanics and eventually received his doctorate in medicine and founded the Polish Aerospace Association. During his lifetime, he wrote more than thirty novels and many short stories, which were translated into 52 languages and sold more than 40 million copies worldwide, and his representative works include "Solaris Star", "Futurology Conference", "Fiasco" and so on. He single-handedly elevated Polish science fiction to the world level, and in 1996 was awarded the Order of the White Eagle, the Polish National Medal, after which Poland's first artificial satellite was named.
Lyme ID photo (1947)
His works focus on philosophical themes, exploring the impact of technology on humanity, the nature of intelligence, extraterrestrial communication, and the limitations of human cognition. As early as 70 years ago, he predicted the emergence of the Internet, search engines, virtual reality and 3D printing, bluntly saying that humanity will encounter the challenge of artificial intelligence and information explosion: "I am interested in the fate of the whole human race, not the fate of the individual." ”
Lem's novels, whether long or short, always have an appealing plot. Lem likes to place the protagonists of his novels in a novel environment, or travel back and forth in a different time and space, or a world of machine rebellion, or a planet crowded with strange creatures. But he was fond of these programs not because he believed in the scenes depicted in such narratives, but because he wanted to use them to construct and test his own "literary model"; he had no intention of depicting a "real future", but only of outlining its model, which he could use to express his view of the whole world and of mankind.
With Barbara in Austria (1979)
On the occasion of the centenary of Lyme's birth, Chinese edition of the anthology was published for the first time
Many people know Lem and it begins with Solaris Star. This book can be described as Lemme's well-deserved masterpiece, as the original novel of the great director Andrei Tarkovsky's film business card "Flying to Space", and as "a modern philosophical reader" (Dai Jinhua), it is indeed the first key to entering the door of the "Lem universe".
"Solaris Star" has had three different Chinese Simplified translations in China, although the sales are limited, but the reputation is extremely high, after many times out of print in the second-hand market was once hyped to about 300 yuan a book, more than 5,000 reminders of the arrival of second-hand books on the fishing website. Looking at the introduction of Chinese of Lem's other works, only the short story collection "Robot Master" and the review collection "Perfect Vacuum" are individual translations and have not formed a scale.
With Granddaughter (2001)
In order to further introduce this science fiction master who "explored the boundaries of human cognition with poetic brushstrokes and profound philosophical thoughts" to Chinese readers as a whole, in 2018, Yilin Publishing House contacted the Polish Lyme Foundation to express the idea of publishing the "Lem Collection", and quickly reached an agreement with the foundation to purchase the Chinese rights of six works, including "Solaris Star", "Futurology Conference", "Fiasco" and so on. This is also the first time in the world Chinese that Stanisław Lem has carried out an overall publishing plan, which has been highly recognized by the Polish side. On the occasion of the "Year of Lyme", Polish media reporters interviewed the relevant editors of the agency.
It is worth mentioning that the translated version of the "Lyme Collection" is recommended by the current Ambassador of the Republic of Poland to China, and the outline shows the charm and foresight of Lem, pointing out that the most thought-provoking of his works is not only the imagination of the material and technical level, but also the profound thinking on the moral level: "These are the answers we have to look for at the same time as the technological development of today's civilization." ”
After the translator finished translating "Fiasco", he was seriously injured and bluntly said that he would never dare to translate again
After the copyright was finalized, finding a translator became the first problem that needed to be solved. As a philosophical Polish writer, the difficulty of translating Lem's works is unprecedented. After a long period of weighing, Yilin Publishing House and the Lyme Foundation chose to translate from high-quality English and German translations, and invited six senior science fiction translators to take on the responsibility, including Jing Zhenzhong, Xu Donghua, Chen Zhuo, etc., to ensure the accuracy of the relevant terminology.
Family photo (2005)
"After translating Lemme's Fiasco, I never wanted to do translation again!" Chen Zhuo, who has provoked the "science fiction ghost" Philip Dick to translate the works of the girder and has rich experience in science fiction translation, said so. He said that the difficulty of translating Fiasco is mainly reflected in Lem's extensive knowledge and philosophical speculation, he often describes extremely detailed technical details to deduce the evolution of the universe, life and technology, and will use extremely complex sentences to deal with some special scenes, sometimes a single sentence has hundreds of words.
Chen Zhuo's translation of "Fiasco" is Lem's sealed work, telling the story of the human expedition to force a strange alien civilization into a desperate situation step by step, and is the largest work in the "Lyme Anthology" published this time. Lem ponders the fate of mankind and the development of technology, presents a great deal of technical details and the ethics of technology in the novel, and wraps the ideological edifice he constructs in a wonderful imagination, fascinating adventure and fascinating plot, but also sets up multiple labyrinths for the translation. In the end, Chen Zhuo handed over a satisfactory answer sheet, but he was also seriously injured by this, claiming that he would never dare to do an interpreter again. Yangzi Evening News/Purple Cow News reporter Huang Yanwen
Proofread by Xu Heng
Source: Purple Cow News