Foreword 序言2

World war I was now over. China had sent some 150,000laborers to france, and Yutang accepted a job at the American YMCA to teach the laborers to read and write. The couple moved to Le Creusot, a small town in france. When they had saved some money, Yutang had taught himself germany and they went to the university of Jena in germany because the living standard there was lower. Yutang took courses and transferred credit to receive his master’s from Harvard. To the dean of Harvard graduate school he wrote in 1920, “I don’t wish to plead for any special leniency in giving me the degree. Now am I going to be intellectually arrested myself after I should get the degree. It si for the reason of great practical utility that I wish to have this certificate. I believe that the Harvard degree will make my progress through the german university much quicker and easier.” In 1923, he received his ph.D in philology from Leipzig university, and returned to china.

 

二战结束了，中国向法国派遣了大约150，000的劳工。语堂在美国的YMCA接受了一份工作，到法国教劳工们读书写字。夫妇二人搬到了一个叫拉库舍特的法国小镇。当他们积攒了一些钱的时候，语堂已经自学了德语，他们就来到了德国的耶拿大学，因为那里的生活水准更低一些。语堂在这里修课并通过学分转换从哈佛拿到了硕士学位。在给哈佛研究生院院长的心中，他写道”我并不希望请求您给我特殊的照顾，使我拿到学位。而如果我得到这个学位，我也不会就变得对学术着了迷。我盼望这个学位只是因为它有很现实的功用。我相信哈佛的学位会使我能够更快更容易的在德国的大学里获得进展。“1923年，从洛佩兹大学获得语言学博士学位后，他返回了中国。

The country was in turmoil. Politically, china was in the grip of feudal warlords who fought one another incessantly. Yutang, a professor in the English department of Beida, wrote articles and criticized the corrupt and ineffective government. The feuding warlords fought on. Duan Qirui ordered the arrest of some 50 professors and newspapermen who criticized the government. Yutang’s name was on the list. Two editors who were arrested were shot in the same night.

 

国家正处于暴乱之中。中国在政治上处于封建军阀的掌握之中，他们相互讨伐，征战不已。语堂，作为北大英语系的教授，著文声讨政府的腐败和无能。仇视的军阀报复了。段祺瑞下令逮捕大约50名大学教授和新闻人士。语堂的名字也在其中。有两位编辑被捕后，当晚便被枪毙了。

 

But now my parents had two draughts, my elder sister and myself. We left for Xiamen, where father joined the faculty of Xiamen University as dean of the college of arts and letters. But university politics made it impossible for him to stay on, and a year later, he joined the ministry of foreign affairs in the wuhan government, because he admired foreign minister chen yuanren, whom he had known in Beijing. When the wuhan government was toppled in 1927, father quit his job, and we moved to Shanghai.

 

然而那时父母已经有了两个女儿，我姐姐和我。我们离身前往厦门。父亲加入了厦门大学，成了文学艺术学院的院长。但学校的政治形势却使他无法立足，一年后他加入了武汉政府的外交部，因为他对身为外交部长的陈元任心怀仰慕，他们在北平时就认识了。1927年武汉政府被推翻了，父亲辞职，我们全家搬到了上海。

Here, he began to write the enormously successful Kaiming  English Books，a series that was adopted as textbooks for middle schools. With his founding of the analects bimonthly in 1932 in shanghai, father made his reputation in china. The magazine specialized in humor and satire, but it was father’s contributions that most captured the readers. Poking fun at government officials, he once said “although you are an official, you still look like a man.”

 

在上海，他开始编写开明丛书。这套书取得了巨大的成功，被中学采纳为教材。自1932年父亲创办了双月刊“文萃”之后，父亲在中国成了名人。该杂志擅长幽默和讽刺，但父亲的撰稿才是最吸引读者的东西。一次在取笑政府高官的时候，父亲说道“尽管你是个官老爷，你仍然有人的模样。”

 

(几本杂志都是史上有名的，不应该生译，但暂时敷衍了事)

 

Father’s lacerating wit earned him the reputation of enfant terrible and accolade “master of humor”. In 1934 and 1935, he started two more magazines, this human world and the cosmic wind. Also at this time, father was writing an English column called the little critic which appeared in china critic magazine, as well as editing a Chinese dictionary in the style of the concise oxford dictionary. At the same time, he was translating English works into Chinese, such as the biography of henrik Ibsen and george Bernard shaw’s Pygmalion. And he was translating Chinese into English, the most notable work of which was qing dynasty author shen fu’s six chapters of a floating life, which was published in bilingual form in shanghai in 1935. the author wrote about the idyllic life he led with his wife yun, whom father described in a preface as “one of the loveliest of women in Chinese literature”. The story and the translation received wide attention.

 

父亲机智犀利的风格为他赢得了“机智坏小子”的称号，并被誉为幽默大师。1934年和1935年他又创办了两本杂志，“人间世”和“宇宙风”。 同时，他还在为中国评论家杂志主持一个名为“小评论家”的英语专栏，按照简明牛津辞典的风格编纂一部汉语辞典；翻译英语著作，如亨利克易卜生的传记和肖伯纳的皮格梅隆；并将汉语名著译作英语，其中最著名的是他翻译的清朝作家沈复的浮生六记，该书1935年以中英对照的方式在上海出版。原著作者在书中记录了他和他的夫人云的田园诗式的生活。父亲曾在序言中把云称为”中国文学中最可爱的女子之一“。原著及译作都受到了广泛的注意。

 

Father’s little critic essays caught the attention of pearl s buk, who was living in china, and whose novel the good earth had won the Pulitzer prize. One evening the two writers met. They had been speaking of foreign writers in cina, when father suddenly said, I should like to write a book telling exactly what I feel about china.

 

父亲在小评论家专栏发表的小品文引起了身在中国的赛珍珠的注意。赛珍珠曾以小说“良土“获得普利策奖。终于在一个夜晚，两位作家见面了。他们谈论到身在中国的外国作家的时候，父亲突然说，我该写本书阐述我个人对中国的看法。

 

“you are the one to do it,” Mrs. Buck replied enthusiastically.

 

“你很适合这项工作”，赛珍珠热切的回答说。