Yes, I meant below, as for the line, 道是 means It is said, and the second half is a pun, 晴-clear weather， 情-love. So the line can be read, it is said, not clear weather or clear weather, or with a pun not love or love,
As for metre, I just use free verse, since I do not think metrics can get any bit close - the original has a rhyme scheme, with tonal patterns, but I would never be able to get close to it in English without serious modification.
It is interesting how clear weather becomes love. I wouldn't have thought of that, but that might have been the poet's original intent.Originally Posted by JBI
The reason I mentioned meter is that I think it is possible to translate these classical poems into metered English poems because they are so short. Since the Chinese poems are often given to children to memorize, the form must be reasonably simple and melodic to recite. This also seems to be what the original intent of the thread was.
James Liu likes to use a metered line with as many accents in English as there are characters in Chinese. Frederick Turner (http://frederickturnerpoet.com/?page_id=210) uses something similar: as many iambic feet in English as there are characters, but I think both of these make the line too long and make it something that a child speaking English would not want to recite.
At the moment, I think common measure might be an appropriate English form to correspond with the 5-character classical Chinese forms, but I don't know what a 7-character form would match to.
Anyway, although I know you don't agree, I think a fitting form for translating the 5-character Chinese classical form into English would be something like what we get in the following:
Mary had a little lamb.
It's fleece was white as snow
And everywhere that Mary went
The lamb was sure to go.
I think a good part of the appeal for children is not the sound really but their parents not smacking them. As they say, 万般皆下品，唯有读书高 - All things are low, with only studying high (idiom), or the classic phrase of education 十年寒窗苦 - the bitterness of 10 years by a cold window - the idea is that you force educate to prepare for later life (the classic idea is that one is able to rise in the world simply from studying hard, which in many senses was the case).
From my understanding, the sounds are catchy, so they stick, but that does not imply comprehension of what is in the poem.
As it is, I am trying to find new idioms - I read a few interesting translations and am contemplating trying something like that, but for the moment I think only free verse can catch any of the essence (though I am a terrible translator).
Back to the translation - the weather is hinted at by the previous line, about sun in the east, and rain in the west, the pun on the character 晴 then creates a comparison, asking, is the lover like the West, or the East, does he love me or not - I assume this is the standard reading, and all notes on the text have gestured to as much - it seems to fitting not to be, as the poem is clearly talking about love. But it poses a question - how to translate that?
Last edited by JBI; 04-18-2011 at 04:32 AM.
On second thought, for seven character lines, it would be interesting to see some usage with either accentual verse, like anglo-saxon literature, that maintains the Caesura, or even Alexandrines, with the caesura in the middle. There is almost always, after all, a cesura after the 4th character, and perhaps a double or triple stress on each line can imitate to an extent the float of the tones.
Bump.
JBI - you seem to like Stephen Owens' translation / anthology?
I have not anything Chinese in English really, but thought having a handy reference in case I need to quote something in translation might help.
I think he is a good poet, and a good translator. I started with him when I couldn't read, now I have moved almost entirely to just reading primary texts. I still read his essays when they come up, but translation no longer is an issue for me.
If someone wanted something to quote in English though, one could do far worse than him.
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