COMPILING A SHAKESPEARE DICTIONARYFOR CHINESE STUDENTS
——Written for the Sixth World Shakespeare Congress, Los Angeles, April, 1996.Liu Bingshan, Henan University, China
Shakespeare is a great topic, about which I can only speak from the view of a Chinese teach-er of English literature.
Shakespeare has been introduced to China for more than a hundred years. We have now twoChinese prose versions of Complete Shakespeare, while some of his representative tragedies,comedies and histories have been translated into Chinese poetry. Our people usually read Shake-speare through these Chinese versions, and Shakespeare has become one of the favourite westernwriters and dramatists among our readers and audiences. But, so far as the study of Shakespeareis concerned, translation cannot take the place of the original. It is unthinkable to make a seriousstudy of Shakespeare without the careful reading of his original plays and poems. But that is stilla question sometimes puzzling us at present.
May I take my own experience to illustrate how an ordinary Chinese scholar has been gro-ping his way in studying and teaching Shakespeare. My first play of Shakespeare was “Romeoand Juliet” which I read at middle school through the beautiful translation made by Cao Yu, themost famous playwright in modern China. The happy impression encouraged me to read the playin the original as soon as I studied English at university. I embarked on this pleasant task with alittle pocket edition of the original play. At first, the peculiarities of Shakespeare’s language ap-peared very interesting and I brushed aside all obstacles with youthful high spirits. Then Iplanned to read over “The Oxford Shakespeare” from cover to cover with the help of C. O. D.But I could only get over the first two or three plays before I put down the big volume with astrong feeling that the language gap between Shakespeare and me was unsurmountable in spite ofmy warm love of him.
Many years later, when I taught English literature at university, I tried by all means to getreference books about Shakespeare, and succeeded in buying from second-hand bookshops in Bei-jing and Shanghai, in early sixties, “Hamlet”， “The Merchant of Venice”， “As You Like It”，and “Henry IV”， edited separately by E. K. Chambers, K. Deighton, and A. W. Verity. Thegreatest acquisition in my search of books was an Arden “Hamlet” which was borrowed from anold professor of our department. Armed with these good editions, I could better understandShakespeare and prepare my lecture about him with greater confidence. I also wanted to get someShakespeare dictionary or grammar, but it was then nowhere to be obtained.
The Cultural Revolution played havoc with academic researches. Our Shakespearean studiesrevived after the end of the Cultural Revolution. But its calamitous effect is deep-going. For onething, the second-hand bookshops where we could formerly pick a few good old editions ofShakespeare are no more. Meanwhile the rising of prices in the international book market hasmade it impossible for ordinary Chinese scholars to buy up-to-date publications about Shake-speare. Universities in Beijing and Shanghai may be better furnished, though not quite fully,with stocks of books about Shakespeare. But, as far as I know, it is verging on impossibility, e-ven now, to find in our provincial universities and local colleges, any indispensable Shakespearedictionary and grammar, and whole sets of authoritative editions of Shakespeare. Under suchconditions, the study of Shakespeare’s original remains the business of a very limited number oflearned scholars who either studied Shakespeare in Britain and America long ago, or have in re-cent years the chances of making advanced studies abroad. Meanwhile, most of our students canonly rely on Chinese translation, or mere stories from Shakespeare, to satisfy their ardent desireto study Shakespeare. For them, the original Shakespeare is still a closed book.
Shakespeare wrote in Early Modern English, which is now four centuries old. From the daysof Shakespeare, the English language has changed greatly. “Time has placed an ever-increasingcloud before the mirror he held to life.” Anyone who tries to read Shakespeare’s original withoutany preparation in advance can only “see through a glass, darkly”. A Shakespeare dictionarycompiler has pointed out bluntly:“ The Shakespearean language is, to an extent greater than issometimes supposed, a dead tongue to us, and can be thoroughly mastered only by study with theaid of grammar, dictionary and comment.” (Richard John Cunliffe: Preface to “A New Shake-spearean Dictionary”， 1910. )
The same is true of the drama of Yuan dynasty (1271～1368), one of our treasures of classi-cal Chinese literature. Yuan drama used a language which on the one hand inherited ancient lit-erary Chinese and on the other absorbed a large amount of contemporary vernacular with numer-ous words and expressions which represent the particular customs, fashions, institutions and waysof life belonging exclusively to that period of Chinese history. These peculiar words and expres-sions constitute the language difficulties for present-day readers. So dictionaries of Yuan dramahave been compiled by Chinese scholars to solve this problem.
It is said that even the students of Britain and America today find it hard to read Shake-speare owing to language difficulties. Then the difficulties shall be twice or thrice as great to Chi-nese students, because for them Shakespeare’s language is not only a foreign language, but also
an ancient one.
As a teacher of English literature, I have long been thinking of how to make Shakespeareeasily accessible to our students. An essay of E. V. Lucas (“A Funeral”) has put me in mind ofthe fact that W.J. Craig, the first editor of Arden Shakespeare, had devoted his lifetime to com-piling a new Shakespeare lexicon instead of old Schmidt, but left his own MS behind him unfin-ished. Natsume Soseki, the Japanese writer and scholar of English literature, has, in his reminis-cence of W.J.Craig, also corroborated the same fact.The world seems to call for the compila-tion and publication of some new Shakespeare dictionary to better meet the demand of contempo-rary readers and scholars.That is a question for the world's Shakespeare scholars to consider.What I should consider first is our students'needs. A chance of obtaining of “A Pocket Shake-speare Lexicon” struck me with the idea of translating it into Chinese.But I gave up the thoughtbecause the little book is not enough for us. How about other dictionaries? Schmidt is too volumi-nous, while Onions is too brief. They are not quite suitable for our students'special needs. AShakespeare dictionary for Chinese students can only be compiled by a Chinese scholar. Such adictionary should explain all the difficult words and expressions in the Complete Works of Shake-speare from cover to cover so that every Chinese student with adequate English foundation canread and understand Shakespeare's original from whatever cheap paperbacks he could get fromthe library, with the aid of this dictionary.After a few years' consideration, I have drawn up theplan of “A SHAKESPEARE DICTIONARY FOR CHINESE STUDENTS” and embarked uponthe project from 1990:
I.Aim: Popularizing Shakespearean studies in China.
II. Users:Students of English language and literature, young scholars of foreign literature and
lovers of Shakespeare with adequate English foundation, mainly in China.III. Languages used: English and Chinese.
IV. Size: Smaller than Schmidt, larger than Onions.
V. Scope of Content: Covering 38 plays, 2 narrative poems and the Sonnets.
VI. Contents of an Item: Head-word——English definition(s) with Chinese translation——Exam-
ples from Shakespeare's original with Chinese translation——Supplementary remark if necessary.
VII. General Introduction.
VIII. Appendices.
IX. Main Sources: Drawn from the abundant fruits of researches inside and outside China during
the past centuries (rewritten and simplified so as to be easily understood by Chinesestudents).
X. Working Process: Vocabulary cards (totalling 60,000～80,000)——Arranged in alphabetical
order——Synthesized——Computerized——Completed MS.——Published as a dictionary in China.
XI. Working Method: Starting from scratch; working like a marathoner, slowly, incessantly
and determinedly; doing by learning, and learning by doing, combined.XII. Time for the Whole Project: 8 years (1990～1997).
Up to now, over 40,000 vocabulary cards have been written, covering the early comedies,major comedies, great tragedies and mature histories. Work remaining to be done includes 30,000～40,000 vocabulary cards covering Greek and Roman tragedies, late romances, the sonnetsand poems.
This is a work of compilation on the basis of the researches made by forerunners of past cen-turies and by learned scholars of our own time. I shall enumerate all the authorities I have consul-ted in a list of acknowledgements in my Dictionary.
William Tyndal, the hero of Bible translation, once declared that he “will cause a boy thatdriveth the plough shall know more of the scripture”.In compiling my Dictionary, I work with asincere hope that more and more young scholars, translators and lovers of Shakespeare will ariseamong our students in the soon approaching 21st century, thus raising the studies of Shakespeareto a higher level in China. |