Dialogues on the Theory and Practice of Literary Translation by Xu Jun;

Author:Xu Jun;
Language: zho
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)
Published: 2019-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Translating a poem, in fact, is a re-creation in a new language, so the most faithful translation can’t be fully equivalent to its original. The translator’s task is to try to narrow the gap between the two sides and to make the translation as close as possible to the original. The translator of the above example is a poet well-known in both Taiwan and mainland China and also a famous writer in the history of Chinese literature. But that translation is too far from the original. The reason for the failure in translation lies in that he didn’t have a good command of the poetic form—this may sound funny, but it is true.

Xu: In the form, the translator, obviously, noticed the original rhyme scheme and translated the metrical verse metrically.

Jiang: The original is a poem with a loose metrical pattern. The first two sections present the alternation of iambic tetrameter and dimetre. The last section presents the alternation of iambic tetrameter and monometer. The basic rhyme scheme is “abab,” which is not strict in the poem. The translator adopts a metrical pattern unrelated to the original except for the pattern of four lines in a section. The rhyme scheme of the translation is “xaxa.” However, even with the methods of “replacing feet with pauses” and “keeping the original pattern,” the translation can’t necessarily reproduce the original spirit and artistic conception and charm faithfully. It may only provide readers with a general form of the original. It was said that poetry is an art of language with the full unification of content and form. The “form” here refers to language rather than meter not only because the poems with loose or no meter are also poems but also because metrical patterns are just well-planned special musical effects of language in the artistic practice.

 Frost’s poems are mostly metrical, but he said that “poetry is simply made of metaphor.” The metaphor is the most important poetic language. But the translator of the above example attached more importance to the meter rather than the global sense of language including the meter.

 The word “door” was translated as “房门” (the door of a house) in the first two lines, which terribly deviates from the original. You know, Chinese or any foreign language with a long history has profound cultural accumulation. The Chinese character “房” (fáng, house or room), like the English words “chamber” and “bedroom,” has a wide connotation and implication. In addition, the original third and fourth lines can be interpreted as that “her divine majority is no longer in existence or unnecessary to be recommended,” or that “her divine decision allows of no interference.” But they can’t be translated in that way, especially the keyword “majority,” which can’t be translated as “济济多士的圈子.” The images and association brought about by the translation of the first two lines are neither beautiful nor elegant.

 In the last section, the translation “花瓣” (petals) is not semantically equivalent to its original word “valves.” Additionally, it is not a good metaphor, which breaks Dickenson’s style of mixing various types of words and using modern civilized words.

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