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Didn’t I just do one of these? Well, no matter—as here’s another installment of 20 five-character regulated verse from Part 5 of 300 Tang Poems. Highlights include Du Fu getting old, Wang Wei getting Zen, and Meng Haoran getting his whinge on. These are, as usual, revised from rougher drafts posted in my other journal.
To be explicit again: my translation priorities are to render the literal sense (including the understood meaning of idioms) in a way that matches the original’s emotional tenor and rhetorical structures, while using as close to regular English meter as I can manage without doing violence to those other priorities. For the two parallel couplets in the middle of the form, I try to maintain the parallelisms, but languages sometimes work differently. (I should do a post unpacking a parallel couplet or two, to demonstrate what they are.) Where it is easy to do without departing “too far” from the original, I sometimes incorporate glosses for obscure referents into the translation, but otherwise save explanations for the notes.
For once, however, I am not utter fail at reproducing the form’s rhyme—I managed only the once, and with imperfect rhymes, but I’ll take the victory I can.
( What does floating about resemble? / A single gull ’tween earth and sky. )
And that takes us halfway through the poems of this form. >deep breath< And keep going on to the next bits.
---L.
Index of Chinese translations
To be explicit again: my translation priorities are to render the literal sense (including the understood meaning of idioms) in a way that matches the original’s emotional tenor and rhetorical structures, while using as close to regular English meter as I can manage without doing violence to those other priorities. For the two parallel couplets in the middle of the form, I try to maintain the parallelisms, but languages sometimes work differently. (I should do a post unpacking a parallel couplet or two, to demonstrate what they are.) Where it is easy to do without departing “too far” from the original, I sometimes incorporate glosses for obscure referents into the translation, but otherwise save explanations for the notes.
For once, however, I am not utter fail at reproducing the form’s rhyme—I managed only the once, and with imperfect rhymes, but I’ll take the victory I can.
( What does floating about resemble? / A single gull ’tween earth and sky. )
And that takes us halfway through the poems of this form. >deep breath< And keep going on to the next bits.
---L.
Index of Chinese translations