COMMON CULTURE THROUGH LITERATURE

By Peng Shituan

Classical Chinese novels enjoy popularity in Vietnam thanks to the efforts of dedicated translators and scholars

Classical Chinese novels are readily available in downtown bookstores of Vietnam’s capital Hanoi.Bookstore patrons usually find as many as a dozen different Vietnamese editions of China’s Four Great Classical Novels, Journey to the West,The Water Margin, Dream of the Red Chamber and Romance of Three Kingdoms. In recent years, Chinese TV dramas adapted from these works including Journey to the West, The Water Margin and Romance of Three Kingdoms have aired on Vietnam television, further fueling the popularity of classical Chinese literature among Vietnamese citizens. How has the modern Vietnamese language evolved?Who translated the Chinese novels into Vietnamese?

Evolution of Modern Vietnamese

Journey to the West(Vietnamese Edition)

Dream of the Red Chamber (Vietnamese Edition)

Phan Ke Binh’s translation of Romance of Three Kingdoms

Tran Tuan Khai’s translation of The Water Margin

Historically, classical Chinese characters prevailed as the most common written language in Vietnam.While maintaining their independence and autonomy,past feudal dynasties of Vietnam drew inspiration from the ruling system of Chinese dynasties, embraced Confucianism, built temples to Confucius, established Imperial Academies and selected officials through imperial examinations. From 1075, when the imperial examination system was first adopted, to 1919, when the last imperial examinations were held, Chinese characters were used as Vietnam’s official written language. Not until 1945 did the Vietnamese government designate Romanized alphabetic script as the national writing system.

The modern Vietnamese language originated in the mid-17th Century when Catholic missionaries from Portugal used the Latin alphabet to record the Vietnamese language. The first Vietnamese dictionary was a trilingual Vietnamese-Portuguese-Latin dictionary compiled by French missionary Alexandre de Rhodes and published in Rome in 1651. In 1815, French missionary Pierre Borie wrote an Annamite-Latin dictionary which was never published.In 1838, using the manuscript of Borie’s dictionary, Jean-Louis Taberd compiled and published a Vietnamese-Latin dictionary that heralded the basic formation of the modern Vietnamese writing system.

After French troops landed in Vietnam in 1858, they established the colony of Cochinchina in southern Vietnam. In 1865, Gia Dinh News, a newspaper named after southern Vietnam’s central city of Gia Dinh (now Saigon),began publishing a modern Vietnamese edition which greatly propelled the popularization of modern Vietnamese across the country. On February 22, 1869,Marie Gustave Hector Ohier,acting governor of Cochinchina,signed a decree ordering that all government and official documents stop using Chinese characters and instead use either modern Vietnamese script or French.

Although modern Vietnamese script legally became the official writing of the colonial administration, its implementation was far from smooth.

Tran Tuan Khai.

On April 6, 1878,Cochinchina Governor Louis Charles Georges Jules Lafont signed a decree requiring that by 1882 all government documents and court records be written in modern Vietnamese. At the beginning of 1879, he ordered promotion of modern Vietnamese learning at primary schools in rural Cochinchina and announced tax breaks for rural men who mastered the language. In 1885, French troops occupied northern Vietnam, where the colonial government started promoting Vietnamese learning in 1910. Following the lead of the French colonists,Minister of Education Cao Xuan Duc of the Nguyen Dynasty(1802–1945), the last ruling family of Vietnam, decided to popularize the Romanized orthography as national language across the country and establish translation agencies. In this context,the Nguyen government announced the last provincial examinations with Chinese characters as official script would be held in 1915. On December 28, 1918, Emperor Khai Dinh issued an imperial edict to abolish imperial examinations after 1919. Along with the establishment of modern schools, Romanized Vietnamese soon became popular as an easy-to-learn language.

In the meantime, modern education advocates such as Tu Luc Van Doan (Self-Reliance Literary Group) began creating literature in modern written Vietnamese, and the emergence of a number of new periodicals such as Nam Phong and Dong Duong fueled the popularity of Latin-based modern Vietnamese across the country.

In 1938, the governor of the French colonial administration approved the founding of the National Language Promotion Association—an initial recognition of the Latin-based orthography as the “national language script” of Vietnam.

The modern Vietnamese language originated in the mid-17th Century when Catholic missionaries from Portugal used the Latin alphabet to record the Vietnamese language.

Scholarly Vision

In 1945, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was officially established. In its first Constitution promulgated the next year, Article 18 stated that voters must be 21 years of age and able to read and write Vietnamese script, which officially established Latinbased modern Vietnamese as the national written language.

In the late 19th Century and early 20th Century, as the Vietnamese people continued their struggle against colonial rule, intellectuals and members of younger generations began focusing on educational development. While promoting Latin-based Vietnamese script,they committed to translating Chinese literary classics,which were previously only understood by the literati and bureaucratic class who could read Chinese characters, into Vietnamese language. Most of the people who could read both Chinese characters and the Romanized Vietnamese script were mainly scholars.

Tran Tuan Khai (1895-1983)was a standout among those scholars. On August 19 of this year, the Research, Protection and Promotion Center forVietnamese National Culture under the Ministry of Culture,Sports and Tourism of Vietnam held a symposium to honor the prestigious cultural celebrity.Hoang Chuong, director of the center, reviewed the literary accomplishments of Tran Tuan Khai, noting that alongside creating poetry,dramas and ballads, the scholar also translated classical Chinese novels such as The Water Margin, Dream of the Red Chamber and Records of the States in the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, ancient Chinese classics such as Book of Mencius and Three-Character Classic and a large volume of books on Chinese history, martial arts and legendary tales into modern Vietnamese. His other translation works include the book Taste of Knowledge by Chinese scholar and philosopher Liang Qichao(1873-1929) and poems of Du Fu(712-770) of the Tang Dynasty.

Trang Tien’s Bookshop in the French Quarter, Hanoi.

Tran Tuan Khai was clearly one of the early 20th Century’s greatest contributors to translating Chinese literature into Vietnamese, but he was not the first.

When Romance of Three Kingdoms was first introduced to the Nguyen Dynasty,it enjoyed overwhelming popularity among Vietnamese readers, so much so that many Tuong plays, a popular traditional Vietnamese musical performing art, were based on stories in the book. Thus,Romance of Three Kingdoms became one of the first Chinese literary classics to be translated into Vietnamese.

Academic research shows that the first translator of Romance of Three Kingdoms was Luong Khac Ninh (1862-1943), a journalist, writer and businessman. In 1902,he translated and serialized Romance of Three Kingdoms in Vietnamese newspaper Nong Co Min Dam based on which, in 1907, Imprimerie De L’Opinion Press in Saigon published a Vietnamese edition of the Chinese classic in 25 volumes.

Subsequently, Romance of Three Kingdoms was translated and published multiple times in Vietnam including a 1909 edition co-translated by Phan Ke and Nguyen Van Vinh and published by Imprimerie-express, a 1920s edition co-translated by Nguyen Lien Phong, Nguyen An Cu and Nguyen An Khuong, a 1930 edition translated by Nguyen Chanh Sat, a 1949 edition published by Phuc Chi Press, a 1960 edition translated by Tu Vi Lang and published by Chau A Press, a 1967 edition translated by Mong Binh Son and published by Huong Hoa Press, and a 1960 revision by Bui Ky based on the 1909 edition after Chinese People’s Publishing House released a new edition of Romance of Three Kingdoms in 1958.

Journey to the West has been promoted in Vietnam in various forms. Before the publication of an edition in Vietnamese national script, Bui Huu Nghia had already penned a stage play for the Tuong opera based on the Chinese original.The first translated version of the book was attributed to Phan Ke Binh, but the date of the translation remains unclear—it was probably completed around the time he completed his translation of Romance of Three Kingdoms.The Vietnamese edition we see today is a revision completed by Bui Ky in the period between 1930 and 1950.

Across the first four decades of the 20th Century, along with the popularization of modern Vietnamese national script across the country, classical Chinese literature represented by the Four Great Classical Novels were widely promoted in Vietnam largely thanks to Tran Tuan Khai, Phan Ke Binh and Luong Khac Ninh among many other dedicated translators.Vietnamese editions of these works continue to be printed today and remain popular among Vietnamese readers of all age groups.