chapter 1
Introduction
1.1 About this book
1.1.1 Poetry translating
Translating poetry is a difficult job, which requires special expertise – or so most
people would say. If asked what this job involves, a layperson might reply that a
poetry translator has to understand a poem written in one language, and rewrite it
in another language. This book aims to give a more detailed answer to this ques-
tion, using the techniques of translation studies combined with input from poetry
translators themselves and their translations.
The first question, however, is: where should we look for answers? An example
text would help here. Yù jiē yuàn (‘Jade stairs complaint’) was written in Tang dy-
nasty China by Li Po (701–762):
玉階生白露
夜久侵羅襪
卻下水晶簾
玲瓏望秋月
In modern Chinese pronunciation, this would sound like:
yù jiē shēng bái lù
yè jĭu qīn lúo wà
què xià shŭi jīng lián
líng lóng wàng qīu yuè
One possible English ‘interlinear’ or word-for-word translation is:
jade stair grows white dew
night-long invades net stockings
withdraws down quartz-crystal curtain
jade-tinkling/exquisite gazes autumn moon
Most adult readers of Chinese would regard this text as a poem. Why we see cer-
tain texts as poems is discussed in depth later. To summarize, poems typically have
one or more of the following features: they use ‘marked’ language (that is, language