Little book for everyone
Since the first series of 10 kinds of "Little Books for Everyone" was first published in 2002, the second series, the third series and the fourth series were launched in 2003, 2004 and 2005, with 10 kinds of each series. Since then, it has been exploring new forms for five or six years, no new varieties have been launched, seven kinds were launched in mid-2013, and three more were launched at the end of the year, so that the "Little Book for Everyone" completed 50 kinds. After that, this series of books blossomed on all sides, and in 2016, "Little Books for Everyone" realized a hundred kinds of plans. In order to highlight its significance, the hardcover version began to be listed. Considering the psychology of readers, for a long time, most of the works have been jingping and parallel, because the editorial ideas are different, and the order of introduction of jingping is different.
How to go after 100 kinds? The publisher proposed that the "little book for everyone" should be layered, layered according to different reader groups, to determine which students should read and which civil servants should read. At first, I was very resistant to this opinion, because as the curator of this series of books, I could not grasp the level of implicit readers, such as Wang Li's "Outline of Poetic Grammar" and Long Yusheng's "Tang and Song Ci Gelu" are probably the most basic introductory books for the creation of old poetry, but it is nothing less than a heavenly book for those who have no feeling for old poetry. Some of my professor friends said that they liked everyone's small books and read everyone's small books, mainly to see how the academic expression was. Mr. Wang Ning put forward higher requirements: "Everyone's Little Book" should become a model of Chinese! Another friend said that his son, who was in high school, liked Zhang Binglin's "Lectures on the Salvation of The Salvation of Traditional Chinese Studies" compiled by me, which surprised me greatly, and I thought that this was a difficult one of the "Little Books for Everyone" that I planned to compile. But there are also people who complain that Zhang Zhongxing's "Wen Yan Jin Arrest" is too difficult, and I don't quite understand what is difficult for Zhang Zhongxing middle school students to study the pamphlet written by Wen Yan Wen, except for the word "Jin Yan Jin". At the 100 kinds of commemorative meeting, Mr. Chen Pingyuan directly refuted the idea of layering the "little book for everyone". For readers, most of the "little books for everyone" are not required to read, and reading them requires the reader's interest and ambition as an internal driving force. If we are interested in a problem, we may go very deep; if the reader has no feelings, he will not have the patience to read the so-called common sense, such as Wang Li's "Common Sense of Ancient Chinese", Guo Xiliang's "Knowledge of Chinese Characters", Su Peicheng's "How to Use Punctuation Marks", Tan Zhengbi's "Introduction to Wen Yan Zhi Mu", and albino "Small Talk and Writing Couplets", although they should all belong to the introductory reading. It must be admitted that "everyone's small book" is indeed a small book and strives to popularize it, but its reading still has a certain threshold.
Native China, Fei Xiaotong, Beijing Publishing House, October 2016.
"Native China", one of the "Little Books for Everyone" in 2019, is listed as the "whole book reading" of the first grade of the ministry's edition of language textbooks, as a reader, I think it is actually difficult to understand it, and it requires the accumulation of our experience and the thinking of reality and history. 2020 is an important year, the "Little Book for Everyone" has achieved two hundred kinds, covering more disciplines and fields, and the variety is indeed more mixed. It was in this year that the "Reading Guide Bibliography for Primary and Secondary School Students (2020)" of the Textbook Development Center for the Basic Education Curriculum of the Ministry of Education was released. In this bibliography that has been debated by many rounds of experts, many works are exactly the varieties of everyone's small books, such as "Native China", "Human Words", "Ancient Chinese Food, Clothing, Housing and Travel", "Heavenly Tao and Humanities", even if they are relatively difficult to read, education experts believe that students should still read them and contact some academic treatises as soon as possible.
Relying on this bibliography, I began to seriously think about whether the "Little Book for Everyone" could do something for Chinese education. In addition to the above mentioned in this bibliography, there are Also Qian Weichang's "Scientific Inventions in Chinese History", Li Changzhi's "The Story of Confucius", Zhu Ziqing's "Classic Talks", Fu Lei's "Twenty Lectures on World Art Masterpieces", etc.; in addition, "Human Words", "Popular Philosophy", and "Poetry Grid" are on the bibliography, "Everyone's Little Book" Wang Guowei's "New Notes on Human Words" is the best version of "Human Words", Aischi's "Philosophical Speech" is the first version of "Popular Philosophy", and Wang Li's "Outline of Poetry Grid" is a better version than "Poetry Grid Law" The more popular one, the content is much the same. Yi Lin's "The Story of the Book" is also listed, but the purpose of the book is Hu Yuzhi's translation, and the "Everyone's Little Book Translation Library" is a translation of Zhang Yunhe. The small book literature volumes that I have been operating include "Chao Hua Xi Shi", "Scream", "Wandering", "Camel Xiangzi", "Tea House", "Zhu Ziqing Prose Anthology", "Wen Yi Duo Poems", "New Moon Collection Flying Bird Collection", and at the same time, the "Famous Classics" series also includes "Three Hundred Tang Poems", "Ancient Literature Guanzhi", "Song CiXuan", etc., which are also in the bibliography, so that the planning of "Everyone's Small Books and Youth Edition" is clear.
Everyone's little book youth edition
So far, 40 kinds of "Everyone's Little Book Youth Edition" have been released. In addition to the "Reading Guide Bibliography for Primary and Secondary School Students (2020)", we have also included works written specifically for young people, such as "Everyone's Little Book" such as Ye Shengtao's "Writing Talks", Lü Shuxiang's "Language Ramblings", and Zhang Yinlin's "Children's Chinese History"; in order to cope with "general education", Mao Yisheng's "Bridge History", Shan Shiyuan's "From the Forbidden City to the Forbidden City", Luo Zhewen's "History of the Great Wall", Wan Guoding's "History of Wugu" and other popular science "Everyone's Small Books" have also been included. As a publishing planner, you must seek newness, and this new is not just a new form, but also hopes to innovate in content. The literary parts of the "Everyone's Little Book and Youth Edition", such as "Camel Xiangzi", are the first editions that we restored according to the "Camel Xiangzi Manuscript", or it is the book that best reflects the original intention of Lao She's creation. For example, "The Old Man and the Sea", there are too many versions, and we have included a new translation of Mr. Lin Yi'an. As we all know, "The Old Man and the Sea" is a work created by the American writer Ernest Hemingway in English. But many people do not study in detail, this work was created by Hemingway in Cuba, based on a Cuban fisherman, and is also an epic poem that reflects the spirit of Latin America. Mr. Lin Yi'an said in the afterword "Dedication to a Different Translation": "In order to modulate cuba's exotic taste, [Hemingway] used a lot of Spanish that was full of Cuban characteristics and expressed the language level of the lower classes such as fishermen, and on some occasions, the writer also quoted a mixture of English and Spanish. In addition, Hemingway's Spanish words and phrases used in the original English of the novel often have spelling or grammatical errors. Therefore, "the translation from the English version is mostly vague in explaining the Spanish words and phrases that appear in this novel, and there is a lot of room for improvement." Mr. Lin Yi'an is a very discerning Spanish translator who has been familiar with English since childhood, so this translation fully reflects the advantages of his multilingualism. His pickiness is also expressed in his efforts to pursue Hemingway's style, for example, in order to correspond to Hemingway's "telegraphic language", his Chinese sentences, as far as possible no more than two crosses. The novel depicts the old man as a marlin, a flying fish, a bird, and a porpoise, and the writer's he and they are translated as "he" and "they", abandoning most of the Chinese translators to translate animals as "it" and "they", which is contrary to Hemingway's original intention.
The Old Man and the Sea, by Hemingway, translated by Lin Yi'an, Beijing Publishing House, January 2022.
Of course, nowadays the publication of official books is strictly controlled. The original intention was to curb the reproduction of shoddy books everywhere. We deserve to welcome them, because new translations of masterpieces, new annotated versions of traditional classics, and some newly excavated important social science academic works of the past should not fall within the category of controlled public books. However, how to distinguish between readers and reviewers in editions, this gives us "everyone's small book and youth edition", and puts forward new topics for the expansion of small books for everyone. If everyone understands the concept of this version, I think that the pursuit of "everyone's little book" for many years will have initial results. I hope that when readers and friends read and choose books, they will not just listen to what others say, but have a clear judgment in their own minds. When we read books, we should read them autonomously, and according to our own tastes, we should lead them deeper and deeper. The improvement of our taste needs to be based on a certain amount of reading. This is what I expect from all my readers.
(Author: Gao Lizhi, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Beijing Publishing House)
This article was first published in Guangming Daily (2022-04-14 11th edition)