While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.
At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.
At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the look out?
At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-en, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.
You dragged your feet when you went out.
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
As far as Cho-fu-Sa.
The poem was translated from Japanese translations of a Chinese poem by Li Po.What do you think about translated poetry? Pound was criticized heavily for the liberties he took in his translation.
I will say point out one mitigating thing about translating poetry that is made obvious by this piece. The line about monkeys making sorrowful noises is one that provokes a a giggle from western audiences. However, to the Chinese, such an image is as perfect as 'birds making sorrowful noises.' Should Pound have translated it that way? I don't think so.
2 comments:
What is the purpose of a translator? If the translator's work is in expressing the author's intent, perhaps the outcome will be different from merely changing the words to make one author's work readable to other audiences. It's a risk to attempt to reconstruct such imagery. Maintaining, as much as possible, the author's writing, such as the description of the sorrowful sounds of monkeys, seems to be the wisest approach for effective translating.
b
Shen presented this poem as one that had had a lasting impact upon him, and I couldn't help but smile inwardly and remember having read it, myself.
b
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