Meet Anna Chen, Mo Yan's Swedish translator

　　因榮獲諾貝爾文學獎，莫言被推倒了聚光燈下。但在大家都在談論莫言的優秀作品及他的文學造詣時，我們不得不說的是莫言背后的女人——瑞典翻譯家陳安娜。沒有翻譯的辛勤及富有創造性的工作，莫言的作品都無法流傳世界各地，更無法獲得諾貝爾文學獎，現在讓我們走進陳安娜，了解這位幕后英雄。

　　As Chinese author Mo Yan arrived at the Swedish National Opera for a performance on Dec.13, three days after he received the Nobel Prize in Literature, by his side was Anna Gustafsson Chen, his Swedish translator.

　　11月13日，中國作家莫言在他喜獲諾貝爾文學獎的第三天赴瑞典皇家歌劇院觀看演出，站在他身邊的是翻譯家陳安娜

　　Chen, a native Swede born in 1965, has been in the business of translating Chinese works to Swedish for the last 20 years. As of 2012, she had translated 20 Chinese novels, including Mo Yan's "Red Sorghum", "The Garlic Ballads" and "Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out". She also has translated works from other famous Chinese novelists, including Yu Hua's "To Live" and Su Tong's "Wives and Concubines." Chen has been honored by the Swedish Academy Translation Award for her work.

　　陳安娜生于1965年，師從著名漢學家、諾貝爾文學獎評委馬悅然，從事翻譯現代中文作品20多年。截至2012年，她已經翻譯了20部中文小說，其中包括莫言的《紅高粱家族》、《天堂蒜苔之歌》、《生死疲勞》。此外，她還翻譯了余華的《活著》、蘇童的《妻妾成群》等，并因出色的工作獲得過瑞典學院的翻譯獎。

　　Chen was first acquainted with Mo Yan's work "Red Sorghum" in the early 1960s. "I read GeHaowen's English translation in a bookstore. Then, in Sweden it wasn't easy to find Chinese books. I found ["Red Sorghum"] interesting and later bought the Chinese version and tried to translate it,"she said.

　　陳安娜在90年代初第一次看到了莫言的作品——《紅高粱家族》。“我最早是在書店里看的葛浩文的英文譯本，那時在瑞典不容易找到中文書，看了英文版覺得很不錯，后來買到中文版，因為覺得很有意思，就試試翻譯吧。這本書翻譯的時間蠻長的，因為那不是我的專業，我有別的工作，而且那時候沒跟出版社簽合同，就是自己慢慢譯。”

　　Although Mo Yan wrote the first draft of "Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out" in only 43 days,Chen spent six years translating it into Chinese. After initial success, she would go on to translate Zhang Wei's "The Ancient Ship" and Mo Yan's "Forty-one Cannons" and "Frogs".

　　盡管莫言僅用了43天完成《生死疲勞》的初稿，陳安娜卻用了6年將其翻譯成中文。在第一成功翻譯完莫言作品后，她開始翻譯張偉的《古船》，莫言的《四十一炮》和《蛙》。Chen says her work has opened up a window to the world which few of her country men have explored.

　　陳安娜表示她的工作為世界打開了一扇窗，而這扇窗在她家鄉僅由少數的人探求過。

　　"Learning Chinese has let me know that Sweden and the Western world are not the center of the world," she said.

　　學習中文讓她明白瑞典和西方世界并不是世界的中心。"In fact, where a person is, that's where the center of his world is."

　　事實上，對個人而言，他在那里，世界的中心就在那里。