Think, when we talk of war horses...

[flemmings]

...that you see them printing their proud texts in traditional, not simplified, hanzi.

Woxin is whipping my ass with its Chinese. A break for something simpler: videlicet, Li Bai. His justly famous chestnut classic, 'At Yellow Crane Tower, Saying Farewell to Meng Haoran on his way to Yangzhou.' (I wish I hadn't found out that this is a warhorse. Met without preconceptions, it's breath-taking. Then you discover it's the 'Wherefore art thou Romeo' of Chinese poetry. Dommage.)

送孟浩然之廣陵

故人西辭黃鶴樓
煙花三月下揚州
孤帆遠影碧空盡
惟見長江天際流

Immensely simple; only a couple of kanji that an intermediate Japanese reader wouldn't know. It's the simple ones that are impossible, as that one poem by Wang Wei about the sun-illumined moss shows. But we do our best.

Here's Bynner:

You have left me behind, old friend, at the Yellow Crane Terrace,
On your way to visit Yangzhou in the misty month of flowers;
Your sail, a single shadow, becomes one with the blue sky,
Till now I see only the river, on its way to heaven.

Should I quote Pound? This is the one that has several howlers, due to him going through two languages he didn't know.

Ko-jin goes west from Ko-kaku-ro,
The smoke flowers are blurred over the river.
His lone sail blots the far sky.
And now I see only the river,
The long Kiang, reaching heaven.

Kojin is just 'old friend' and not anyone's name. And well, Ko-kaku-ro is yellow crane tower in Japanese.

And here's the one I like best, from a book called The Heart of Chinese Poetry by Greg Whincup, the first book I ever met to give me the Chinese text and a literal word-for-word rendering. It took a long time for people to realize that the occasional English speaker could in fact make some sense of the hanzi involved, but I'm pleased to see the notion of Chinese text and English translation is now becoming more widespread.

My old friend
Bids farewell to me
In the west at Yellow Crane Tower.
Amid April's mist and flowers
He goes down to Yang-jou.

The distant image
Of his lonely sail
Disappears in blue emptiness,
And all I see
Is the Long River
Flowing to the edge of the sky

Sniff sniff snerf, which the other translations don't make me do.

Comments

[rasetsunyo.livejournal.com]

'Wherefore art thou Romeo' of Chinese poetry.

Ahaha so true!

Li Bai's poems have a way of turning into chestnuts probably because they're lovely and relatively simple. At least it's not 《静夜思》which is beyond chestnut, I don't even know what to call it.

[feliciter.livejournal.com]

beyond chestnut,

into the realm of parody, probably.

孟浩然's own <<春晓>> (春眠不觉晓，处处闻啼鸟; 夜来风雨声，花落知多少)is another staple. Classmates used to convert 闻啼鸟to 蚊子咬.

[rasetsunyo.livejournal.com]

Ahaha I remember that! And《静夜思》床前明月光，疑是地上霜。 举头望明月，低头思故乡。 second line used to be turned into XX(whoever's name)脱光光

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

ah ha ha ha!!! We all had to memorize that thing when we were kindergardeners ... it was sheer torture, but you've modified it to be quite delightful.

[rasetsunyo.livejournal.com]

Lol not me but more inventive classmates. But kindergarden is a bit young to be memorising poetry isn't it.

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

Not when it's for that damnable Chinese new years event where every class has to get up on stage and do something. It's short enough that even the kindergardners can do it, especially with teachers to prompt them along. It's better to do poetry than to have to sing "I am a pizza!"

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

I love the Whincup. It might have something to do with the lineation, I dunno. But it's beautiful.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know I've read that last translation somewhere... best one, I agree.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

I like it because it says almost exactly what the Chinese does, and so well. Shows what difference word choices make.

But a lot of its punch depends on Whincup playing *I think* a little fast and loose with a couple of hanzi. I love the 'disappears in blue emptiness' because the visual is so striking and exact, but if Japanese is anything to go by 空 usually means sky. 'Flowing to the edge of the sky' has the same immediacy, and I suppose 'sky' is a reasonable expansion of 天-- but you can't use it unless you've translated 空 as something else. The other translators didn't take the out of making 天 into its English equivalent, 'heavens' plural, and so were stuck with the image of 'going on to heaven', which is not only less immediate and sensual, it automatically references Christianity to me. Not that 'flowing into the heavens' would have been much better.

But kudos to him for avoiding the 'only' trap and substituting the sadder 'and all.'

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

空 in Chinese means either sky or empty(ness)

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but when it has 碧 in front of it, one assumes the author intends the sky meaning. You *can* translate it as emptiness and I'm glad he did, but I'm personally not convinced that's what Li Bai meant when he wrote it.

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

Yes, one assumes the author intended sky, though, I could just as easily see an argument for the author intending water ... or for that matter, the horizon intersection between water and sky where the like colors blend together. I'll look when I get home and see if the poetry reader has anything enlightening to add.

I think it depends on if you parse 碧空盡 as 碧空 盡 or 碧 空盡. Either way, emptiness give the right feel and works well in English.

Chinese doesn't always make a clear distinction between meanings of words the way Japanese does. So Li Bai could very well have meant both sky and emptiness and was playing with the fact the word had multiple meanings. You have no idea how embarassing, my surprise at how mangaroo could tell when a word had one meaning vs another meaning until she pointed out they were pronounced differently in Japanese. One of those face palm moments!

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

I think it depends on if you parse 碧空盡 as 碧空 盡 or 碧 空盡.

And the fact is, I suppose, that you can parse it both ways simultaneously, which is what's glorious and head-bangy about Chinese verse. It'd be interesting (and quite beyond my abilities) to see how the editors expand the line for modern readers.

until she pointed out they were pronounced differently in Japanese.

You mean there's an actual virtue to on-yomi and kun-yomi? Colour me shocked. ^_^ Everyone believes that the existence of at least two and as many as 26 (IIRC) readings for the same kanji is a dastardly plot on the part of the Japanese to keep foreigners from attaining literacy.

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

My poetry book is not where I want it to be, so it will be a few days before I can look this one up. Sorry.

Yes, there appears to be a real virtue to on-yomi and kun-yomi, at least to me. :-)