I keep running up against this unfortunate truth when trying to describe Xiangsheng to westerners: Xiangsheng is in Chinese. People can’t understand it.
Moreover, the reason people can’t understand it is more than linguistic one. It’s a cultural issue. The content of Xiangsheng is inherently Chinese.
Consider the piece “Little Children” that I have learned in Chinese.
在想当初，大宋朝文彦博，幼儿倒有灌穴浮球之智。司马温公，倒有破瓮救儿之谋。汉孔融，四岁就懂让梨逊之礼。十三郎五岁朝天。唐刘晏七岁举翰林，一个正字参朋比。汉黄香九岁温席奉亲。秦甘罗十二岁有宰相之才。吴周瑜一十三岁拜为水军都督，统带千军万马，执掌六郡八十一州之兵权，使苦肉，献连环，借东风，烧战船，使曹操望风鼠窜，险些丧命江南。虽有卧龙、凤雏之相帮，那周瑜也算小孩子中之魁首。这些小孩子你比得了哪个？
Great, right? Illuminating? Okay, okay, here’s my translation:
Long ago, Wen Yanbo of the great Song Dynasty realized when he was just a child the knowledge that he could float a ball up from a hole by pouring in water. Sima Wengong had the foresight to save a child by breaking the vat. Kong Rong from the Han dynasty understood at the age of four the etiquette of how to properly yield gifted pears to others. Shisan Lang met the emperor at the age of five. Liu Yan from the Tang dynasty held the post of high minister at the age of seven; Huang Xiang from the Han dynasty protected his parents and warmed them with his body’s heat. Zhou Yu from the Wu kingdom was appointed the captain of the navy at the age of thirteen, gathered great armies from all across the land from six provinces and eighty-one states, tricked others by harming himself to create a false sense of weakness, engaged many ploys designed to fool his enemies, caught the eastern wind, and burned many enemy boats, causing Cao Cao to turn and flee, almost causing him to lose his life south of the river. Even with the help of Wo Long and Feng Chu, Zhou Yu of the Wu kingdom still counts as a shining example of the ability of children.
Truthfully, that translation is overly helpful in explaining background knowledge to Westerners, giving the hints needed to guess the stories that Chinese people already know. Chinese people know about Zhou Yu. They know about the Wu Kingdom. They know of Wen Yanbo and his clever trick to get his ball back when it had fallen in a hole. They know of Sima Wengong, of how he saw a child fall into a vat of water, and while the adults struggled to fish him out, broke the vat and saved the child. They know these stories. Westerners don’t.
Xiangsheng is Chinese. Translated into English, it’s still Chinese. So what to do?
I hit upon this idea: What if instead of Zhou Yu from the Wu kingdom, we had Joan of Arc from the French kingdom? What if instead of translating words, instead I translated cultural tokens, substituting as best as possible similar situations with names that westerners knew?
Translating culture, and not language, turns out to be very difficult. Poring over lists of Western child prodigies, I asked myself some questions that I am sure nobody else has asked before. These included:
1) Is getting a B.A. at age 12 equivalent to becoming the Chief Minister of the Qin Kingdom at the age of 12? Or is that post a closer cultural equivalent to getting a Ph.D at the age of 12? Maybe being Secretary of State at 12 is a closer match—although that’s never happened in America.
2) Isn’t Zhou Yu’s defeat of the legendary warrior and tactician Cao Cao more impressive than Joan of Arc’s victory over some hapless English knights? Then again, Joan did win a war, whereas Zhou Yu, in this piece, is credited with winning only a battle—and he failed to cut off Cao Cao’s retreat.
I fought through these issues, resolving some better than others. There really is no reason to believe that exact cultural parallels exist, so if I couldn’t find exact parallels then that doesn’t mean my translation is imperfect.
Once I had my examples, it was only a matter of describing the talents of the young people into phrases that matched the rhythm and tone of Xiangsheng. If delivered with the same oral technique, cadence, and dramatic flair as a Xiangsheng performance, it seemed to me the closest translation would, paradoxically, be the copy where every single word was different.
And so, I have translated “Little Children” into English. Do you think it is a better translation than the original translation English above? Or is it more appropriate to say that two two are now apples and oranges—different fruit, but both clearly fruit all the same?
In ancient times King David the Israelite won his kingdom as a youth with five stones and a slingshot. The English poet Pope’s five-year-old hand scrawled poems still read today. Beethoven at the age of seven performed his own original compositions. Blaise Pascal’s first proof was written in chalk. At the age of six, Howard Phillips Lovecraft conceived of a hidden monster. John Stuart Mill, at eight, spoke several dead languages. Karl Benz, at 15, became an engineer.
Joan of Arc at the age of seventeen seized the Hundred Years’ War, picked up her sword and banner, rode to the town of Orleans; she led the charge, stormed the gates, broke the siege, and saved her home, drove the English out of France, though she was captured and put to death herself. Even though her life was short, still Joan of Arc should be counted amongst the greatest of children.