The Goths: Lost Civilizations, David M. Gwynn, Reaktion Books, 2017.

Department of History, Fudan University, Xu Mingjie,

The Goths: Lost Civilizations, David M. Gwynn, Reaktion Books, 2017

"From History to Legends: The "Defined" Goths", written by David M. Gwen, translated by Cao Lei, published by China Social Sciences Press, Gulou Xinyue in December 2020, 298 pages, 82.00 yuan

In the years of studying Western history, " Goth " has always been a word that makes people feel both familiar and unfamiliar. To be familiar is because the word can be seen everywhere in books related to Western history and culture. Taking the major I have been studying - the history of the medieval European times as an example, almost all textbooks will mention this term, especially two parts: one is the " Gothic " active in European history from the fourth to eighth centuries. They invaded and plundered the Roman Empire and established a new kingdom; the other is the " Gothic architecture that was popular in the twelfth to sixteenth centuries, with its tall, magnificent and magnificent nature. Moreover, the use of the word "Goth" breaks through the historical scope of medieval times and is often used to describe a modern culture with thriller or gloomy colors, involving many fields such as literature, film and television, music and popular fashion. For example, many film works by Hollywood genius director Tim Burton reflect the influence of this culture. For example, the dark and weird castle in " Scissor Hand Edward " is a typical representative of Gothic elements.

The Castle in the movie "Edward Scissors Hand"

However, it is such a seemingly simple common word that often makes people feel "strange". Although Gothic culture is called "Goth", it has no direct relationship with "Goths". For example, Gothic architecture was not created by the "Goths", because this architecture was first popular in the high school of the Middle Ages, when the "Goths" as an independent nation had long disappeared in history. Many other elements of modern Gothic culture are far from the "Goth", that is, the relationship between the original meaning and the extended meaning of the word "Goth". In this case, why does Gothic culture have the name of "Gothic"?

"The Goths: Lost Civilizations, hereinafter referred to as "The Goths") by British scholar David M. Gwen tells the complete history of a "Goth" from ancient times to the present in a very detailed manner. The book is divided into two parts: the first half involves the real Goths in history, telling the story of the rise and fall of this Germanic tribe, that is, how to migrate from Scandinavia to all parts of Europe, and then invade the Roman Empire and loot the Roman city in 410 AD under the leadership of the leader Alaric, and then establish the Otgothic and Visigothic Kingdoms, but in the end, it inevitably leads to the fate of the demise of the kingdom and the dissolution of the nation. The second half involves the history of how Europeans understand the "Goths" after the demise of the Gothic Kingdom and the demise of the Gothic people as independent nations. During the Renaissance and the Reformation period, two distinct interpretations of the Goths emerged, sometimes portrayed as "destructive barbarians" and sometimes hailed as representatives of the "energy and freedom" of the Germans. Later, the impression of "Goth" in the field of public cognition became increasingly far away from the real "Goths" in history. As a result, the word "Goth" gradually deviated from the scope of history and was greatly interpreted and developed in many fields such as literature, architecture, film, music and fashion trends, thus forming many new meanings. By tracing the history of "Goths" from ancient times to the present, the author not only fully presents the multiple meanings of the word "Goth", but also explains the root cause of the far difference between the original meaning of the word and the extended meaning.

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Although "The Goths" is a popular historical reading material, it is from a professional historian. The author is a professor of History at the Royal Holloway College of London. He has written a lot, especially at the historical research of ancient Rome. Therefore, he is naturally familiar with the history of the Goths that invaded and contributed to the decline of the Roman Empire.The chapter contents of the whole book are arranged in chronological order, telling the development stories of the "Goths" from ancient times to the present, and various original historical materials that can be easily collected, as well as columns such as historical chronology, extended reading guides and indexes included outside the text, reflecting a rigorous academic research attitude and a rational historical view. It is worth mentioning that the book's extended reading guide lists various important academic works related to the theme of the chapter. These works are the basic literature for the writing of this book, which shows the author's academic taste. The author's writing is also quite particular, and while ensuring the text is simple and fluent, it can also be rigorous and standardized.

Most of the research works on "Goths" often only involve part of its history, even very small fragments. Although they also have academic value , due to their lack of integrity, it will inevitably lead readers to "only know one but not the other", and it cannot eliminate the question of why the word "Goth" has such a diverse and complex meaning. "The Gothic" is a history of the integration of ancient and modern times and disciplines and , so it can meet readers' desire to get a glimpse of the whole picture. As mentioned above, the book includes two parts, namely the real history of the Goths and the cultural heritage left behind by the disappearance of the Goths as an independent nation. Although both themes involve "Goths", there is a clear historical distinction from the perspective of professional research. The first half covers roughly the fourth to eighth centuries in time period, and the research on related issues often has a strong historical research color, while the second half covers the time period from the fifteenth century to the present. Because it involves cultural heritage, it is often the category of cultural and artistic research. From an academic research perspective, the author Gwen broke through his own research expertise and surpassed professional limitations, and included the content of the second half into his writing, thus forming a complete history of "Goths" from ancient times to the present. This courage to try is worthy of praise.

Not only that, this work also reflects the charm of the study of "concept history". "Concept History" is a branch of new Western historiography in the 20th century. Its advocates emphasize that the "concept" in language is similar to the cultural relics and historical books unearthed in , and is also a carrier of historical accumulation. By studying the formation, evolution, application and social influence of various basic concepts in language, the history of change can be revealed from a new dimension. The research proposal of "concept history" is similar to that of Mr. Chen Yinke's statement that "any word is to write a cultural history." Specifically speaking, the author focuses on the concept of "Goth" and fully presents the evolution of historical memories of "Goth" in different eras through historical tracing from ancient times to the present. Especially in the second half, the author combines the changes in the Western world since modern times, especially the Renaissance, Reformation, and the later British Revolution, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, and the development of nation-states, and tells how intellectuals from various countries reinterpret the legacy of the "Goths" and thus form a complex impression of the "Goths", and these impressions are getting further and further away from the real "Goths" in history. It can be said that the past has changed thousands of years, and the meaning of the word has changed. In other words, the author established a close connection between the Western history of "over a thousand years" and the "change of word meaning" of the concept of "Goth". Therefore, the book "Goth" is not only a complete history of "Goth", but to some extent it is also a Western history from the perspective of "Goth".

As a professional researcher of Western medieval history, I have special feelings when reading this book. The activities of the Goths in the fourth to eighth centuries, including the invasion and plunder of the Roman Empire and the establishment of new kingdoms, were an important chapter in medieval European history. Since then, the Goths have disappeared as independent nations, but the history of the "Goths" still has a long-term impact on Western history and has become an indelible memory of Westerners, and has continued to this day. In fact, the historical memory of the "Goths" in modern times is largely a distinctive representation of Western medieval concepts.Many intellectuals of the Renaissance once derogated the "Goths" as the "cruel destroyers" of the Roman civilization, and these people often regarded the medieval era as the "dark age". Opponents portrayed the "Goths" as symbols of the Germanic "energy and freedom" and even pursuers of constitutionalism. These people naturally tend to believe that the Middle Ages were an important stage of development of Western civilization. The two factions have praised and criticized each other. Although their positions are completely different and they are constantly arguing about each other, this just shows the important position of the "Goths" and the Middle Ages in Western history. The author summarizes at the end of the book: "The real Goths in history have long gone away, but the cultural heritage they left behind is so widespread that it cannot completely disappear." Although this sentence refers to "Goths", it seems equally appropriate to describe the Middle Ages.

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Of course, this book is not without its shortcomings. As a "general history" of the "Goths", although the content is complete, there are occasional omissions. The most obvious flaw is that the content in the second half is relatively weak. This is due to chapter design issues. The main part of the book has eight chapters, and four chapters in the first and last two parts. The author’s intention is to strive to achieve a balance, but the historical clues involved in the second half are much more complex than the first half, and the relevant historical materials and documents are much richer. Therefore, the equal distribution of space actually leads to the discussion in the second half being restricted. On the other hand, the author's academic expertise is ancient history, and he is inevitably unfamiliar with modern Western history. This also leads to the writing of the second half being less skillful and sophisticated than the first half, which makes him feel a little overwhelmed. A typical example is Chapter 7, "Struggle for Gothic Identity", which discusses how various countries in early modern Europe, especially Spain, Britain, Germany and the United States, reinterpret and shape Gothic cultural heritage as the core content of their own national identity. It is obvious that this topic involves a lot of content, not only covering many Western countries, but also covering periods of time spanning hundreds of years. However, due to limited space, the author can only overview the complex history, and the discussions in many places are just glimpses and are not in-depth enough. Another prominent example is Chapter 8 "Gothic Culture", which introduces various Gothic cultural forms from ancient times to the present, but unfortunately, the important content of "Gothic Font" is missing. It should be noted that this is a very popular manuscript font form in medieval European history.

Gothic fonts in medieval European manuscripts

Although there are some problems with this book, it is still a good historical book overall. Readers who are interested in Gothic history and culture may wish to read it. Unfortunately, this evaluation only applies to the original book, not the Chinese translation (published by China Social Sciences Press in December 2020). I read the Chinese translation in accordance with the original book and found that there were many mistakes and omissions, which was completely unexpected.

First of all, the translation of the title is too rash. The English title of the original book is "The Goths: Lost Civilizations". Upholding the rigorous attitude of academic work, it should be translated as "Goths: The Falling Civilization", while the Chinese translation is mostly translated as "From History to Legends: The "Defined" Goths", which is far from the original text, and this extension is not consistent with the theme of the whole book. In addition, there are similar problems in the translation of chapter titles. For example, the original English title of Chapter 2 is "Alaric and the Sack of Rome", which should be translated as "The Calamity of Alaric and the Roman Empire", while the Chinese translation is translated as "The Collapse of Emperor Alaric and the Roman Empire", which is not accurate. The original English title of Chapter 7 is "The Struggle for Gothic Identity", which should be translated as "Struggle for Gothic identity", and the Chinese translation is translated as "Fight for Gothic", which is obviously different from the original meaning.

and translation of the main text part is also often omitted. Let’s take the following chapter 6, “The Freedom of the Barbarians”, which I read carefully. Page 147 Translation mentions the Gothic lineage "appeared in the 17th century Visigothic Spain", which is an obvious mistake, because the original text mentioned in the "7th century".The original historical material in the translation on the same page indicates that a citation is from "The History of Gothic Kings and Etymology", while the original text is actually "Etymology (Etymology) 9.2.26-7". It can be seen that the translator not only mistranslated the title of the book, but also omitted important information about the relevant chapters of the cited works. Pages 156 and 160 mention that the Goths once plundered the Roman city under the leadership of "Attila, the King of the Huns", but the original text mentioned the Gothic leader "Totila". Page 174 quotes a poem by the famous British writer John Dryden , but the translation misses the last sentence "And Rhyme began t’ enervate Poetry", which may be translated as "The melody of the poem is also boring."

In addition, the translator will not only misunderstand the meaning of the specific sentences of the original text, but also lacks the necessary common sense of relevant history, which leads to the meaning of the translation being seriously inconsistent with the original text. For example, on page 167, it is mentioned that " Anglo-Saxon people, as a branch of the Germans, never succumbed to any foreign forces, and their descendants dominated the entire Western Europe region". This sentence is puzzling. The author is obviously not familiar with the history of this period, because the ruling area of ​​ Anglo-Saxon is limited to England. After I checked the original book, I realized that the corresponding original text of this sentence was "The Anglo-Saxons in turn were just one branch of the Germanic tribes who had resisted any foreign yoke and whose descendants ruled over western Europe", which should be translated as "The Germanic people never surrendered to any foreign force, and their descendants ruled the entire Western Europe, and the Anglo-Saxons were just one of these groups." What's more, the translation of a sentence on page 178 completely misinterprets the original meaning. The translation says: "At the same time, the cultural image of 'Goth' contains concepts such as the Gothic constitution and the free parliament, but it seems less important." This is inconsistent with the context of the context. In fact, the original text of this sentence is "But the 'Gothic constitution', and the parliamentary liberty that it enshrines, was no less significant", which should be translated as "but 'Gothic constitutionalism' and its spirit of parliamentary liberty advocated are equally important."

The above-mentioned translation problems are not limited to Chapter 6, but are actually common in other chapters. In addition, the most confusing thing is that for some reason, the translator often randomly explains or modifys the content of the original book at will, adding many "translator's notes". Of course, these annotations also have a positive effect. Many of them involve explanations of proper nouns, which do help non-professional readers understand the content of the whole book, but there are also inexplicable contents in these "translator's annotations". For example, the comment 1 on page 3 says, "The theoretical basis of this book is knowledge archaeology and genealogy. It is recommended that readers refer to the relevant works of Foucault . Foucault ." Note 1 on page 112 and comment 1 on page 151 again mention "knowledge archaeology", but the original book does not mention Foucault at all, and the two concepts of knowledge archaeology and genealogy do not appear in the main text. It can be seen that the translator has fully explained it based on his own understanding and does not conform to the original author's original intention. In addition, the original book was attached with the "Noun Index (Index)" column, but in the Chinese translation, it became a "comparison of important translation names". What is also puzzling is that the segments of the Chinese translation are also quite different from the original book. The original complete paragraphs are often artificially split into two or more scattered paragraphs. Although shorter paragraphs are easier to read, this move will also cut off the original complete writing ideas and thus affect the readers' reading experience.

These issues in the Chinese translation of the book "Goth" are not isolated cases. In fact, we can see more or less in many foreign translation works. The root cause is that fast food culture is prevalent at present and there is a lack of prudence. Recently, there has been a craze for introducing and translating foreign historical books in the book publishing industry in my country, including both professional academic monographs and popular best-selling books. This phenomenon is naturally gratifying. The only drawback is that the standards of these translations are often of varying quality, and many works of average quality or even poor quality fill the book market, which not only causes waste of resources, but also spreads wrong knowledge and harms readers.Introduction and translation of foreign works is a beautiful thing for benefiting readers and benefiting readers, but the translation work is not easy. Therefore, you must be careful and serious!

Editor in charge: Zheng Shiliang

Proofreading: Zhang Yan