CHIN
213 2003 Essay. Ray
Brownrigg 26 September, 2003
Some
Thoughts on Translating Modern Chinese Poetry
1. Introduction
Modern Chinese literature is
generally considered to be the literature of the period 1919-1942, known as the
May Fourth period. This literature is
characterised by radical anti-traditionalism, a deliberate move away from
traditional language, style and subject matter.
Modern Chinese poetry in particular shows most evidence of change,
mainly because of the very strict requirements previously imposed upon the
classical form. This same period is
characterised by tremendous political, cultural and social upheavals that were
taking place within
This essay attempts to highlight
issues with the translation of literature in general, and poetry in particular,
with specific reference to modern Chinese poetry.
2. What is Modern Chinese Poetry?
Modern Chinese poetry may be defined
as the poetry characterised by the radical changes associated with the May
Fourth movement of 1919. There are three
primary characteristics that define such poetry. Firstly, it does not conform to the very
rigorously defined structure of classical poetry. Secondly, it uses the language of the masses
– the spoken language – in preference to the classical written language that
was available to such a small percentage of the population. Thirdly the poetry was free to widen the
horizons of subject material available.
Previously, classical poetry, and indeed classical literature in general
(with a few notable exceptions) was mainly concerned with non-fiction, either
from an objective or more personal viewpoint.
The existence of any one of these three characteristics is sufficient in
general to identify a non-classical poem.
The birth of modern Chinese poetry
was predated by a decade or so of gestation around the time of the fall of
imperial rule and the setup of a nationalist government in 1911, although there
had been some precursory attempts in the last few decades of the Qing dynasty
to break away from the restrictive classical mould for poetry. The May Fourth incident provided the defining
moment in the psyche of the nation that empowered the protagonists to unleash
their potential and be accepted by the masses which were, after all, the
primary intended audience.
3. Why Translate Modern Chinese
Poetry?
Why not? There are many arguments about how it is
impossible to translate poetry. For
example there is the oft-quoted line from Robert Frost "Poetry is what gets lost in
translation." However Eugene Chen
Eoyang, somewhat charitably, states “The generally accepted notion that
translation, even without obvious faults and mistakes, is impossible,
particularly when rendering poetry, may be viewed not as a source of mischief
and ignorance, but as a mode of insight and understanding – even
self-knowledge.” This implies that
even though the task may be impossible, that is not a good reason not to
attempt it, and recognising the ‘impossibility’ of the task is a step towards
producing something of value.
In general, there are good points
raised in the arguments that translation of poetry is ‘impossible’, but the
reality is that poetry has been translated in the past, and will continue to be
translated in the future. The world
would be a poorer place if this were not so.
Indeed, Eoyang also suggests that “… the development of civilization as
we know it could not have occurred without translation.”
In one sense, arguments about the
impossibility of translation of poetry are incontrovertible. The ‘exact’ translation of a poem from one
language to another, while retaining all the features that distinguish a poem
from prose, is indeed impossible.
However one must analyse what is meant by translation in the context of
poetry. The reality is that “… to
translate a poem whole is to compose another poem.” [Jackson Mathews, p67] Not only that but when one considers what a
poem is then the meaning of translation in this context becomes clearer.
It cannot be denied that the
composition of poetry is an art form and thus the poet is an artist. As is usually the case with art, the feelings
driving the composition of any single work of art can come from within the
artist often with little or no conscious effort. Further, and for the same reason, it may be
the case that the artist does not have a specific audience in mind – the work
of art is being created ‘merely’ to manifest in a concrete form these inner
feelings. Thus it may be difficult for
even the poet to be able clearly to describe the exact ‘meaning’ of a poem. If
it is difficult to completely define a poem even in its native language, how
can one possibly then determine the accuracy of a translation? To borrow from the age-old phrase, the
appreciation of poetry is in the mind of the beholder. This being accepted, then any poem, in
whichever language, can mean different things to different people, and so this
confounds any potential comparison to an infinite degree.
The point is that the translator should
aim for good poetry primarily, rather than just a good translation. Perhaps it is better to refer to a
translation that produces good poetry as a successful translation rather than a
good translation, to avoid confusing the quality of the translation per se
with the overall quality of the resulting poem.
Once written, a poem immediately can
start to take on a new ‘life’. Like the
Heraclitus saying “You cannot step in the same river twice”, any single poem
can evoke different emotions each time it is read, even if by the same
person. Therefore one cannot expect any
two readings to be the same, let alone any two translations. Even if the original author translates his
own poems, the moment of creation of the original has passed, and so the
translation is of an already different poem.[1]
Hence when we talk about translation
of poetry, perhaps a more appropriate word would be interpretation (as distinct
from the specifically real-time meaning of interpreting). However since the general meaning of
translation is to transform a piece of literature from one language to another,
it is convenient to retain the word translation even when referring to poetry,
as long as we recognise that for poetry there is more to translation than just
converting words from one language to another.
4. How Should Modern Chinese Poetry
be Translated?
There are four possible ways that
modern Chinese poetry could be translated, each with its own benefits and disadvantages. These are:
1.
Literal translation word
for word.
2.
Literal translation
(poetry into prose).
3.
‘Poetic’ translation
(poetry into poetry).
4.
‘Form-retaining poetic’
translation that retains rhyme, rhythm and structure.
These could be considered a progression
from one extreme to another, but it is certainly not clear that the latter
extreme is the best target for a translator.
The first two methods do have some
merit in providing a foundation for fine-tuning a final translation, or for
providing study material for students of translation (or indeed students of
poetry), but there is no way that a literal word for word or a literal prose
translation of a poem could be considered to be a genuine translation in the
sense of a ‘final product to be enjoyed
as a poem in its own right’ which surely is the whole point of translating
poetry.
Literal translations alone are not
enough, since “When the sense lies in sentences and contexts, and not in the
composites of meanings for individual words, the flavour of the work must be
captured intuitively, not analytically.” [Eoyang, p.102] and “… absolute verbal
accuracy is less desirable than reproducing the tone of voice and rhythm of the
original.” [O’Brien p.84]
Certainly the fourth, ‘ultimate’
way, is a candidate for the impossibility label discussed earlier. That is, while it may indeed be poetry, there
is a danger that the process of conforming to the structure and rhythm and
rhyme (henceforth collectively referred to as form) of the original causes a
loss of meaning in the translation, and therefore the non-conforming
translation is the ‘better’ translation.
Jackson Mathews considers this copying of form to be “the error of
literalness”. [Mathews p.68]
Nevertheless, it must be remembered
that when an identifiable form is present in the original, each word has been
carefully chosen to craft this form. It
is then the interpolation by the reader who ‘transforms’ these chosen
individual words and phrases into meaningful images. In this context it could be argued that there
is no reason why a similar process of crafting could not happen during the
translation, without significantly altering the diversity of potential images
that the reader may conjure up.
Alliteration, assonance and onomatopoeia are an entirely different
matter, still an integral part of a poem when present, but certainly harder to
reproduce in another language. Further
we have not touched upon some of the many other aspects of translation of
poetry in general, such as cultural differences in imagery and subtleties of
language, both of which many authors about translation seem to be interested in
discussing.
5. Special Comments Relating to
Modern Chinese Poetry.
One barrier to successful conversion
of form when translating modern Chinese poetry into English may well lie in the
very richness of the English language.
Chinese characters in general are frequently blessed with multiple
meanings, whereas in English, most words have quite specific meanings. Thus while there may often be a multitude of
interpretations in the original the translator is usually constrained to
‘select’ one, or at best a small subset, of these.
Michelle Yeh identifies three
specific “difficulties in translation intrinsic to the unique nature of modern
Chinese poetry.” [p.107] These are the
use of the vernacular, which can cloud meanings for all but those familiar with
the language of the time of composition, the potential for convoluted syntax,
which can introduce ambiguities, and the fact that repetition is more common in
Chinese than in English poetry, although this may be better expressed as
repetition being less acceptable in English poetry.
It has earlier been mentioned how
the lack of an identifiable audience can make it very difficult to
determine how good a translation is. In
the case of modern Chinese poetry, this is somewhat less of a difficulty, since
in general there were two identifiable audiences. The primary audience was the population at
large, not just the literati, with the availability of literature to the masses
being one of the primary motivational forces behind the literary
revolution. A secondary, but much
smaller audience, was other contemporary poets, many of whom were engaged in
discourse about the revolution.
6. Conclusions
While one of the key points above is
that in translating poetry one should aim for a good poem as the outcome rather
than a ‘good translation’, we hopefully have identified some of the
characteristics of what constitutes a ‘successful’ translation of poetry and
identified some of the characteristics of modern Chinese poetry that make such
‘successful’ translations difficult.
Further it is concluded that it is very difficult to define the accuracy
of translation of a poem, since the original is in a sense a moving target.
Nevertheless it is hoped that some
encouragement has been given to students of Chinese in general and of Chinese
literature in particular to take up the challenge and at least attempt
‘composing a poem’ in one’s native language as a translation of a poem in the
language being studied.
Bibliography
Eoyang, Eugene Chen, The
Transparent Eye: Reflections on Translation, Chinese Literature, and Comparative Poetics (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i
Press, 1994)
Fang, A., "Some Reflections on
the Difficulty of Translation", in R.A. Brower, Ed., On Translation (NY: Oxford University Press,
1966)
Huang, Parker Po-fei, "On the
Translation of Chinese Poetry", in Rosanna Warren, Ed., The Art of Translation: Voices from the Field
(Boston: Northeastern University
Press, 1989), pp. 84-97
Mathews,
O’Brien, Justin, “From French to
English", in R.A. Brower,
Ed., On Translation (NY: Oxford University Press, 1966)
Yeh, Michelle, “On English Translation of
Modern Chinese Poetry”, in Eugene Eoyang and Lin Yao-fu, Translating Chinese
Literature (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995)
[1] One possible exception to this might occur if the poet simultaneously composed a poem in two or more languages in which s/he was equally fluent. Then throughout the process of composition the ideas and emotions would feed back and forth between the compositions, and one might be able to claim that the poems were ‘the same’.