Chapter 124
The translation did not go well.
It was mainly because of Shi Wuwei, who thought Anna was a tragedy.
Of course, it was a tragedy, no one objected to that.
But he thought that the tragedy of Anna had appeared from the very beginning, which no one disagreed with, and great works of literature always show the seeds of tragedy at the beginning.
But he should never have treated Vronsky as a protagonist.
Perhaps because he is a man, he never substitutes for Anna, even if she is psychologically active from beginning to end. It’s Vronsky he substitutes for, and he thinks he’s the protagonist and Anna is a supporting character.
He doesn’t think Vronsky is in love with Anna from the beginning, he’s just interested in seducing an upper-class married woman, and the two of them play the usual upper-class love game, if there’s anything he’s willing to commit himself to, it’s that they can be lovers in the future, the kind that’s somewhat genuine.
But marriage? He’d never thought about it.
He bragged to his cousin about the details of his pursuit of Anna, a married woman, and his cousin listened with rapt attention.
The description was at the beginning.
Yang Yuyan realized that if she left this section out, her translation of Anna would be Liang Zhu. And if she added Vronsky’s conversation with her cousin, then it would be Simon Qing and Granny Wang.
That’s not the same as her original intention.
Her intention was still to depict Anna’s love, not to depict how a woman is seduced. The former is an affair, the latter a crime.
But then she realized that if she still insisted on portraying only love, she would be no different from the men on the market. They all use love as a cover, coaxing men and women to immerse themselves in it, shed a few tears, and ignore the truth.
And she is a woman, which is extraordinarily vicious.
When she fretted about this and had to change the main plot of the translation, Su Chunjun was still surprised: “I told you they were Pan Jinlian and Ximenqing.”
He amusedly put his arm around her shoulder to coax her not to be upset, thinking that girls are really more romantic after all.
Yang Yuyan thought of Shi Wuwei and Su Chunjun, and unintentionally seemed to have cracked a truth.
She said to Yang Yuchan, “Men are so realistic.”
Shi Wuwei was such a naive and pure person, but he never saw Anna as a love story either.
Everyone treats Vronsky as a supporting character in this story, with Anna as the main character. But in fact it was Vronsky who started the whole story, and he drove all the plot development. Anna, like a puppet, slowly stepped into a tragic fate under his influence, and finally died in the train station where they fell in love.
She remembers that on her deathbed Anna saw through Vronsky’s love as no different from Karenin’s, and that neither of them loved her.
She thought that was as sad as it could get.
But after she realized that Shi Wuwei and Su Chunjun’s interpretation of Anna was completely different from hers, she felt a coolness pouring into her body from the sky.
Yang Yuchan said, “Do you remember when the surname Yang said in the newspaper that he loved his mother and loved us? Many people believed him. At that time, I thought they were playing dumb and pretending to be confused.”
Yang Yuyan nodded.
Yang Yuyan: “I finished reading Anna.” She flipped the book to the end and pointed it out to her, “Vronsky intended to swallow a gun to kill himself when he heard that Anna had committed suicide, but he let someone save him. His friend lamented that Vronsky loved Anna miserably, believing that Anna, a woman, had tortured a promising young man with her love, and finally abandoned him and deserted him.”
Yang Yuyan looks, just a little bit at the end, like another bystander making a comment for the person reading the book.
Yang Yuyan: “That’s what makes my heart go cold. Of those people who read the newspaper, I guess a lot of them think that Surname Yang really loves us and mom. Even if he betrayed his family, published a divorce, tried to take the family’s money, never cared about us, and so on. These people still think that he loves us.”
What’s sadder than the truth is when you realize you can’t change the falsehood.
More people believe the false than the true, so the false becomes true.
After thinking about it for a day, Yang Yuyan changed the outline. She still characterized Anna as the protagonist, but started from Vronsky’s point of view, and all of his conversations were preserved, as well as Karenin’s, and Anna’s girlfriends, her friends, everyone’s comments about Anna.
Anna became the real “protagonist”.
Su Chunjun took a look at the scenes she had selected, and realized that it would take years of work to translate them all.
But he wouldn’t remind her that it was a big job.
It was nice to have something to keep her busy so she wouldn’t always be pining to go back to school.
Yang Yuyan finished organizing the new syllabus with the help of everyone and made a big wish, “I’m going to turn it over in a week.”
Everyone could see that this was impossible, and she would be considered good if she could get to the second chapter in a week.
But everyone didn’t say anything.
Shi Wuwei took a look at Yang Yucan and Su Chunjun, wondering why these two didn’t remind her.
Yang Yucan noticed his line of sight and explained behind Yang Yuyan’s back, “So that she will study seriously.”
During this period of time, Yang Yuyan’s interest in Russian was waning rapidly. She could no longer stand those long, long words, compared to how kind French was.
If it wasn’t for the novel Anna, which she had a sudden urge to translate, she would probably have long since ranked Russian brightly after French by now, and would never bring it up again.
Yang Yuchan thought this was a good opportunity.
Shi Wuwei had always thought that Yang Yucan doted on Yang Yuyan, and he could see that everyone in the Zhu family spoiled Yang Yuyan, but even if he could see that, he had never intended to say anything before, not only because he was afraid of making shallow friends, but because he seldom refuted other people’s claims.
He said admiringly, ”You’re really strict with your sister. This is good for her.”
Yang Yucan still held a grudge against Yang Yuyan for saying that she was not as good as Shi Wuwei would be at teaching this matter, but she couldn’t take it out on Shi Wuwei’s head, so she could only redouble her efforts to urge Yang Yuyan.
However, after three days, Yang Yuyan began to realize that this was not an easy task. It was more difficult than she had imagined.
On one hand, she wanted to express everything clearly. On the one hand, it would make the length incredibly long, with more and more characters …… She had only intended to write three characters.
Also, by adding too many characters, the storyline became richer and the main idea became less clear.
Finally, she realized that if she tried to combine the characters’ personalities with the content, the language and words would become even stranger.
She wanted to back out.
But there were three people here that did not allow her to take a step back, they had done so much work for her, how could she be ashamed to say that she didn’t want to do it anymore.
Yang Yuyan’s full of regret is difficult to express in words.
The weather is getting hotter and the sun is getting bigger.
Ma Da-ma’s soda is selling better and better, sometimes selling a box a day.
Pork Liu, who sells pork, and the man who runs the dim sum store have not returned, and the store is still not open. More and more stores on the street closed, but the number of people on the street did not decrease, bicycles were still rushing around, and the outside of the trams were full of people, the faces of the pedestrians were either sad, numb, or anxious.
Cars and yellow buses crossed the streets with their horns blaring.
A black automobile stopped under the Zhu family.
Seeing that it was Ms. Zhu sitting inside the car, Ma Da Ma hurriedly greeted, “Ms. Zhu, you’re back, have a soda.” She took the initiative to open two bottles of soda and handed them over.
The driver was Yu Yingda, who jumped out of the car to open the door for Ms. Zhu, turned back to take the two bottles of soda, and took out two dollars and threw it to Auntie Ma.
Auntie Ma hurriedly caught the money and wanted to return it, “No, no money.”
Zhu Yanshu took the soda and said with a smile, “Take it.” Then he walked into the Zhu family building with Yu Yingda.
The two of them went up the stairs one after the other, Yu Yingda kept looking at Zhu Yanshu, happy and cheerful.
Zhu Yanshu was also quite kind to him, unlike her previous politeness and detachment.
She wanted to exchange gold bars, but she didn’t realize that now the banks don’t sell gold bars anymore, they only collect them. And the gold and silver stores on the street also began not to exchange gold bars – unless you take gold jewelry to exchange, he also deducted one or two points discount into it.
The money issued by the state is no longer working.
Zhu Yanshu had more than 2,600 dollars in her hand, and the more she put it away, the less it was worth, and in the end it would just turn into a pile of waste paper.
She thought of a way to replace them at the card table.
She had played mahjong all her life, and really wouldn’t lose to someone else. So it was replaced with someone else losing.
Mrs. Liao lost more than five hundred dollars in one day and a small thousand in two days, and was so angry that she cursed. She didn’t target Zhu Yanshu, she only hated herself for her bad luck and bad hand.
Yu Yingda was then called in to take over the fight.
Eating and drinking is his skill in eating, he immediately found out that Mrs. Liao always lost money because of Zhu Yanshu. He didn’t show his hand and helped Zhu Yanshu to start harvesting the money from other people’s hands, but he did win a few hands and finally made Mrs. Liao change her colors.
After Mrs. Liao took the seat again, he was beside him with advice. Although he didn’t know why Zhu Yanshu needed to win money at the poker table, he had been quietly helping her.
It took six or seven days for Zhu Yanshu to win, then lose, then win again, alternating between winning and losing at the poker table, and finally exchanging all the money in her hand and turning it into gold bars in her pocket.
This lack of Yu Yingda’s help is not possible, not to mention she did not lose a penny. Yu Yingda was the one who finally proposed to use the gold bars to settle the bet, so that she wouldn’t open her mouth and make Mrs. Liao suspicious.
In this way, she would have to accept Yu Yingda’s request to send her home, and she would also have to invite him in for a cup of tea before she could do so.
Standing in front of the door, Zhu Yanshu smiled and said, “If Mr. Yu doesn’t mind, come in and have a cup of tea.”
Yu Yingda’s heart felt like a fire, and like he finally drank a cup of refreshing spring water, he stood beside her and said, “If it’s not too much trouble, please forgive me for interrupting, many thanks, many thanks.”