Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow and the Chinese Revolution - KU ...

translators in all.* Among them were Liu Ch'i-feng, Hsieh Chienming,
and Sun Tsung-fan. Liu was originally from P'ing-hsiang,
Kiangsi, and had studied at Peking Normal University. Liu's English
was excellent, so he enrolled in the "English Class" at the university.
Liu and I went to Moscow in the same group, and we worked together
for a long time in the seminar on the History of the Evolution of
Social Formations. I have heard that Liu died from some illness in
Moscow.
Hsieh Chien-ming was a fellow provincial of mine from Tse-li
County, Hunan. Although his oral interpreting skill was not very
good, his ability to translate written material was of superior caliber.
But all of the translators, despite their undeniable talents, were
hampered by an insistence upon their producing a literal word-forword
translation between two such totally different languages as Russian
and Chinese. The main reason for the choice of such an approach
was the desire for accuracy. While the translation of the Marxist works
was not completed by these translators and was finally taken over by
Communist China's Bureau for the Translation and Editing of the
Works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin, the translations done
through the Translation Bureau were the standard ones used by the
CCP for many years. On the whole, the influence of the Translation
Bureau surpassed that of the corresponding American- and Europeaneducated
Chinese students' attempts to translate and introduce into
China the elements of science and democracy. The American- and
European-educated Chinese students were the first to begin the modernization
of China, yet science is still undeveloped in China and democracy
has never been implemented, but Johnny-come-lately communism
is firmly entrenched in China.
The work of translating seems to be merely literary and technical
in nature. Yet it contributed greatly to elevating the general level of
* I was among the translators while I was at the university. In addition to interpreting
in some of the classes, I translated special lecture notes, reference works, and two works
by Engels—From Monkey to Man and Dialectics of Nature. In the spring of 1930, when
the struggle against Trotskyites in Sun Yat-sen University had reached a climax, the university
authorities urged Yang Shang-k'uen and me to translate Stalin's large work On the
Opposition in great haste. Working literally night and day, we managed to finish the job
in a couple of weeks, for which we eventually were rewarded with a magnificent vacation
at Yalta. During the Second World War, I saw copies of our translation on sale in Chungking
in an edition published by the Hsin-hua Jih-pao under the Chinese title Lun Huan-tuei-p'ai.
My name was not given as a translator. The translation was credited to a Chinese rendering
of Yang Shang-k'uen's Russian name, which I have forgotten.
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