« Back

In recent years, a fair amount of Chinese poetry has been translated into English, it is fairly clear that a word in Chinese does not always have one clear-cut, fixed meaning, but often covers different meanings, some of which may be mutually exclusive. Take a simple example: sheng (生); this word, used as a verb, could mean: to live, to give birth to, to be born; as a noun: life, young man, student; as an adjective: alive, raw, strange, innate, natural, lively. It is known to all that in translation, one important contextual factor consists in what kind of interpretive resemblance the audience expects between translation and original. The ultimate test for a translation is whether or not it achieves with the target audience what the translator intended it to achieve, rather than whether it conforms to some translation-theoretical notion of equivalence, so does poetry translation.

One of the striking characteristics of Chinese poems is their density. The art of the author often shows itself in the ability to communicate a richness of ideas, feelings and impressions that are not necessarily expressed in words, but communicated implicitly. The problem for the translator is how to convey this rich meaning in a similarly condensed manner, we hope that the following insights can help the poetry translator to better cope with the problem of implicit information.

So, what is “implicit information”? Two conditions must be met: on the one hand, it must provide some new information - we don't usually consider it relevant to be told things we already know. On the other hand relevant information must in some sense "link up" with other information one already has. Information that does not relate to any such given information seems irrelevant.

How to successfully transfer those “implicit information” embedded in Chinese poetry? One thing certain is that translation is a kind of reported speech or, in relevance-theoretic terms, an instance of the interpretive use of language, which makes it possible to arrive at detailed and concrete comparisons of translation and original, without any need to resort to the use of general categories or terms, such as 'literal' or 'free'. This entails freedom for the translator: there simply is no fixed, translation-theoretic norm of equivalence that he needs to fulfill in order to produce a "good" translation.

To put it in a simple sense, translating a poem is a lot like writing a poem yourself. You have to know what you want to say. The following two tips might be helpful in Chinese poetry translation:

1. Stay Close to the Poem. Read the poem again and again until the words become second nature on your tongue. By doing this, you will be able to feel the rhythm of the poem. You will recognize the pace, the pauses, the beats, the swirls of energy. Write the poem in longhand and make ten copies. Stick these where you can see and read them. These copies will familiarize you with the poem's grammatical structure: Where the adjectives are, where there is a break in tenses.

2. Go for Grace. When you translate a poem, your job is to stay as close to the meaning as possible. That said, you also have artistic license to use (not abuse) the meaning to make a clear and graceful translation. Remember, you want readers in your language to enjoy the poem, not marvel at how well you can directly translate words.

The following are some examples to share: