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Three Hundred Tang Poems #224-260
25 June 2019 07:56 amThree Hundred Tang Poems (唐诗三百首: Táng shī sānbǎi shǒu) was first compiled in 1763 by Sun Zhu out of the massive Complete Tang Poems collection, covering works written during the Tang Dynasty* between roughly 600 and 900 BCE. It originally had 310 poems, but other editions have different numbers—most versions today have 320. All editions are arranged in eight-or-so parts by poetic form, including a handful of fixed forms, rhymed poems of arbitrary length, and folk-style poems (with variations on how some works are categorized).
Below the cut is a translation of Part 7 of this version, the jueju poems with four lines of five characters each—not coincidentally, the collection’s shortest poems. (Baby steps, baby.) These are very much apprentice work, and I don’t vouch for their accuracy. (Baby steps, he repeated.) Most have been revised, sometimes significantly, based on better understanding since initial drafts were posted here.
My translation priorities have been, in order, rendering the literal sense, matching rhetorical structures and tone, using as close to regular meter as I can manage without doing violence to those first two, and only after that, when I can manage it, including some form of rhyme. I’m dissatisfied that the last priority is last,** but I don’t yet have enough experience to judge what to sacrifice to match forms (see below). Although the originals are all in the same meter, translations use either a four or five beat line, usually the former, usually iambic, depending on what I can make work best for a poem. This, too, is not ideal. (Baby steps, he said firmly.)
In Middle Chinese, the second and fourth lines rhymed, and sometimes also the first, and there were four possible patterns for the tones of syllables. In modern Mandarin, after a millenium-plus of sound shifts, the rhymes are usually obscured and tone patterns completely botched—and there is no solid scholarly consensus on original pronunciations. As a result, pinyin transcription is all-but-useless for appreciating the original form*** and I give only the hanzi (simplified) characters.
As always, suggestions/discussions/corrections are welcome.
* Not counting one 14th century poem mistaken for an earlier work.
** Replicating the rhyme structure is all too often ignored in Chinese translations, skewing our impression of what the originals were like.
*** This is in striking contrast to the changes from Classical to Modern Japanese, where just about all sound shifts were regular, making modern-pronunciation transcripts, however inaccurate, at least useful.
( Green lees in fresh unfiltered wine / The red clay of the little stove )
That was an interesting exercise, to say the least. I am continuing on with the next-shortest form of poems, ETA: which are posted here.
---L.
Index of Chinese translations
Below the cut is a translation of Part 7 of this version, the jueju poems with four lines of five characters each—not coincidentally, the collection’s shortest poems. (Baby steps, baby.) These are very much apprentice work, and I don’t vouch for their accuracy. (Baby steps, he repeated.) Most have been revised, sometimes significantly, based on better understanding since initial drafts were posted here.
My translation priorities have been, in order, rendering the literal sense, matching rhetorical structures and tone, using as close to regular meter as I can manage without doing violence to those first two, and only after that, when I can manage it, including some form of rhyme. I’m dissatisfied that the last priority is last,** but I don’t yet have enough experience to judge what to sacrifice to match forms (see below). Although the originals are all in the same meter, translations use either a four or five beat line, usually the former, usually iambic, depending on what I can make work best for a poem. This, too, is not ideal. (Baby steps, he said firmly.)
In Middle Chinese, the second and fourth lines rhymed, and sometimes also the first, and there were four possible patterns for the tones of syllables. In modern Mandarin, after a millenium-plus of sound shifts, the rhymes are usually obscured and tone patterns completely botched—and there is no solid scholarly consensus on original pronunciations. As a result, pinyin transcription is all-but-useless for appreciating the original form*** and I give only the hanzi (simplified) characters.
As always, suggestions/discussions/corrections are welcome.
* Not counting one 14th century poem mistaken for an earlier work.
** Replicating the rhyme structure is all too often ignored in Chinese translations, skewing our impression of what the originals were like.
*** This is in striking contrast to the changes from Classical to Modern Japanese, where just about all sound shifts were regular, making modern-pronunciation transcripts, however inaccurate, at least useful.
( Green lees in fresh unfiltered wine / The red clay of the little stove )
That was an interesting exercise, to say the least. I am continuing on with the next-shortest form of poems, ETA: which are posted here.
---L.
Index of Chinese translations