Tuesday, February 5, 2008

古從軍行, in a way

A scruffyish translation attempt for one of my favorite Tang poems. Criticisms welcome, since I'll admit that a decent chunk of the vocab and contextual usage is beyond me.

Oh, and the linking words added at the beginning of each translational stanza (by, hear, now, see, and, so) are meant to be read at the beginning of both lines in each stanza they head. Just written once for a cleaner, sparer layout.

古從軍行

李頎

白日登山望烽火, 黃昏飲馬傍交河。
行人刁斗風沙暗, 公主琵琶幽怨多。
野雲萬里無城郭, 雨雪紛紛連大漠。
胡雁哀鳴夜夜飛, 胡兒眼淚雙雙落。
聞道玉門猶被遮, 應將性命逐輕車。
年年戰骨埋荒外, 空見葡萄入漢家。

by
white day, we climb mountains, scanning for beacon fires
yellow dusk, we water horses, near the borderland river

hear
the scout's diaodou, so dim in windblown sand,
the princess's pipa, so great in lonesome grief

now
wild clouds: for ten thousand li, there's not a city or a town
rain and snow: incessant, it fuses the sky to the desert

see
the foreign geese, night after night, calls keening as they fly
the foreign children, tear after tear, eyes both streaming as they cry

and
we hear tell: Jade Gate is still blocked off,
we obey the general: and stake our lives to our flimsy vehicles

so
year after year, war bones are buried, out in the desert
just to see grapes brought in, to the homes of the rich.

5 comments:

redredday said...

hey dear buddy,
do you know my heart is racing to see this post? finally the doors are opening wider, letting us into your enchanted territory. just wanna quickly tell you this. have printed this out to read it again with more time on my drive home for another new year celebration. will also be sharing this with my mom as she has been busy trying to write poetry these days. wish you could be in person with us!

talk to you sooon (sorry i am so bad with text messaging!)

lini said...

小馬:你好!數年不見,你的中文進步神速!連唐詩都理解得這麼好!我們以你為榮!很高興看到你在思敏的「部落格」留言。更高興能在你的「部落格」致上我對你的讚賞和祝福!
祝你新年健康平安!
我和叔叔非常想念你!
lina(思敏的媽媽)

redcatblackcat said...

真的是過久不見!對不起,對不起,可恥的我那麼久才做出回答!

恐怕我的中文沒有任何可見的進步,反而發生了極為明顯的退步:連這幾句話中都可以看到語法、用詞上的各種各樣的錯誤!

你知道什麼嗎?如果把你名字的兩個音節倒過來,也就是說成為「nila」,那就是我給我第一個買到的電腦起的名字!印尼語的意思是「靛」,就是我喜愛的植物和顏色。

我也非常想念你們全家人!

那你自己的「部落格」何時將開張?

redredday said...

so i've been reading these lectures on Chinese poetry by Lu Zhiwei. do you know him? i just learned that he was one of the developers for Pinyin. very cool.
i couldn't quite pinpoint exactly what it is before (it is probably very obvious to you) but from him i got that basically, there is no grammar(!) in chinese poetry. and that is probably why it is so hard, if not impossible, to translate precisely.
although the rawness ("[emerging] naked" as opposed to being "attired in grammar"-C.W. Luh) of the words/poetry is somewhat lost in this translation here, i love what you did using those linking words. they really make the translation. for me, what you have translated in English could stand on its own as a fresh new poem to enjoy.

redcatblackcat said...

Thanks, Ms. W., for your generous comments! I've never heard of Lu Zhiwei, but clearly I ought to!

Yes, it's that bareness of classical Chinese that I love so much.

And it's hard to recapture that under the demands of English.

In the end because English really wanted grammatical markings and linking elements, I tried just to use them as sparely and as sharply as I could, and even sometimes offer them as a new power of their own.

Within my smidgenously limited understanding of Tang poetry, I think I can say this: it's not so much that there's no grammar, but that the reader tends to supply the grammar themself. And then sometimes part of the poetry itself is that more than one grammatical structure---and therefore more than one meaning---can be fleshed onto the bare bones of the written poem.

Something else that I have had pointed out to me is the use of semantic parallelism and opposition of individual elements of the poems, so that at one point in a poem the writer might put "up", and at the same point in the next line, "down"---or "day", then "night", so on. So, alongside rhyme and its siblings, this semantic rhythm gives its own binding pattern as well.