外媒对话中国作家李翊云：用英文写作有多难

外媒对话中国作家李翊云：用英文写作有多难Launching a career as a novelist seems like an impossible dream to many ― let alone doing so in a second or third language. But thats exactly what Yiyun Li did after she graduated from college, moving from Beijing to the U.S. to study immunology at the University of Iowa; once there, she wound up honing her fictionwriting skills at the prestigious Iowa Writers Workshop.对许多人来说,要做一名职业小说家似乎就像一个不可能的梦想,更不用说用第二种语言或第三种语言来写小说了。但这正是李翊雲所从事的工作。大学毕业后,她从北京来到美国爱荷华大学学习免疫学。一到那儿,她就兴奋地来到享有盛誉的爱荷华作家工作室训练自己的小说写作技巧。In a poignant essay for The New Yorker, Li, now the acclaimed author of several novels and short story collections written entirely in English, meditates on what leaving Chinese behind and embracing a new language has meant for her:如今,李翊雲已创作了几部完全用英语写成的小说和短篇故事集,而她也成为了备受欢迎的作家。她曾在《纽约客》上刊载了一篇深刻的文章,在文中思考放弃汉语,使用一门新的'语言对她来说意味着什么: Over the years, my brain has banished Chinese. I dream in English. I talk to myself in English. And memoriesnot only those about America but also those about China; not only those carried with me but also those archived with the wish to forgetare sorted in English. To be orphaned from my native language felt, and still feels, like a crucial decision.多年来,我的大脑已经摒弃了汉语。我用英语做梦,用英语自言自语。而我的记忆,不仅是那些关于美国的记忆,还有那些关于中国的记忆;无论是那些我记住的,还是那些我希望存档并忘记的记忆都是用英语来分类的。要放弃母语,不论是过去还是现在,我依旧觉得像是做出了一个重大的决定。 Li writes that although she grew up in China, shes only written professionally in English ― a fact that has caused some surprise...