Donkeys Bray Crimson

驴叫是红色的。全村的驴齐鸣时村子覆盖在声音的红色拱顶里。

驴叫把鸡鸣压在草垛下，把狗吠压在树荫下，

把人声和牛哞压在屋檐下。

Donkeys bray crimson. When donkeys cry in concert, a crimson vault of sound envelopes the village. It keeps the rooster’s crow under the haystacks, the dog’s bark under the trees, and the human voice under the eaves.

 

狗吠是黑色的，狗在夜里对月长吠，

声音飘忽悠远，仿佛月亮在叫。

羊咩是绿色的，在羊绵长的叫声里，

草木忍不住生发出翠绿嫩芽。

鸡鸣是白色的，鸡把天叫亮后，

便静悄悄了。

 

Dogs bark black. When a dog howls at the moon, the sound drifts a long way, as if the moon itself were howling. Sheep baa green. During their prolonged baaing, grass and trees can’t help bursting forth with tender green buds. Roosters crow white, but they fall silent as the sky pales.

 

也有人说黑驴的叫声是黑色，

灰驴的叫声是灰色。

都是胡说。

驴叫刚出口时，是紫红色，白杨树干一样直戳天空，

到空中爆炸成红色蘑菇云，向四面八方覆盖下来。

 

 Some say that black donkeys bray black, and gray ones gray. Nonsense. When a donkey opens its mouth and utters a cry, it’s actually fuchsia in color, thrusting into the sky like a poplar, until it explodes high above into a crimson mushroom cloud that shrouds all within the eight directions.

***

The text above is excerpted from the opening of The Audible Annals of Abudan by Liu Liangcheng (凿空 刘亮程 著). I particularly like the way my co-translator Jun has rendered sound here; onomatopoeia play a key role in the novel.

In the Chinese original, animal sounds have a color attached to them, lit., the dog’s bark is black-colored (狗吠是黑色的); in her rendition, dogs bark black. In the former, color is a noun that describes an action, while in the latter, the color and the act of barking are virtually inseparable.

凿空 is a Chinese novel by Xinjiang-based Liu Liangcheng (刘亮程), newly translated into English by Jun Liu (刘浚) and Bruce Humes. The working title is The Audible Annals of Abudan. To request an excerpt or information about foreign language rights, contact Yilin Press’s Ms. Yvonne Wang (王玉强) at wangyuqiang@yilin.com

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