larryhammer | “someday you might find you’re starving / and eating all of the words you said”

How to translate a Tang poem in a few easy steps:

Copy the poem into your working file. If necessary, convert to simplified characters.

Scan through for characters and words you already know. Note those down.

Look up all the characters and words, even the ones you (think you) know. Jot down the readings and all relevant senses for each, paying attention to probable grammatical roles in the sentence. Remember that most modern two-character words didn't exist back then, so break those down into their characters. If possible/needed, try to find a historical dictionary entry.

Construct a best-guess, painfully literal, line-by-line translation, marking all words you had to supply, such as pronouns, in (parentheses).

If you are completely lost in places, consult an online Chinese commentary or two. (300 Tang Poems is studied in school; there are tons of explainers for confused students.) Pay special attention to glosses on terms modern native speakers find confusing, as well as word-salads that turn out to be names. Incorporate what you've learned into your by-character notes and painful-literal rendition.*

If you are STILL confused on something, okay fine go find a couple ~~ponies~~ English translations. (300 Tang Poems is famous; there's at least three complete translations (though don't use Bynner's) plus well-known singletons are in multiple anthologies and translation blogs.) Only do this if you REALLY have to.

Once you think you know what the poem is doing, line-by-line, write it out in something approaching natural English. This will be closer to free verse than metered, but generally at this point you'll start hearing cadences in places.

Consult an online Chinese commentary or three. If you haven't done this already, check the glosses, but also now focus on modern-language translations and explanations of context. Fix the parts you seem to have gotten wrong. (There are always parts you got wrong.) Don't worry about whether a commentator is talking through their hat -- it's not like you'd recognize if they were, or not yet. If commentators disagree, go with what makes the most sense to you.

Apply a belt sander to your free-verse translation. If possible, fine-grit paper as well. Listen for and bring out the cadences of English meter within the grain of the wood. When something doesn't seem to be working, double-check possible alternate meanings of characters and more commentaries. Iterate.

Once you've gotten as close to graceful as you can at this time -- and it will be very far away -- put down that working file and step away slowly.

Set aside a minute to angst and despair about the impossibility of translation and the stupidity of trying this given your language level.

There. Now take a deep breath. Move on to something else.

Some time later, come back and sand it some more. Iterate until either a) it has that quality the ancestors called "passable" or b) you just aren't getting anywhere.

Put the poem in the draft posting queue.

Just before posting the poem, triple-check your work.

When you post, move it and all your notes to the compilation file of translations. If it's a not-getting-anywhere version, mark it as needing more work.

Between bouts of working on later poems, return to the compilation file, reading through drafts and making corrections/improvements as you see them. If comments on a draft post are helpful, incorporate those insights. Eventually, as you learn more about the language and the genre, you'll see things you got wrong before. Iterate.

[Eventually there will be later steps, but I haven't gotten that far so don't know what they are.]

See? Easy-peasy lemon-squeezy.**

* Ideally, into your flashcards as well, so as to expand step 2 faster, but this is not an ideal world.

** Here, have some lemonade.

---L.

Subject quote from 32 Flavors, Ani DiFranco.