Chinese Literature
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Translation Review Number Seventy • 2005 The University of Texas at Dallas Translation Review No. 70, 2005 SPECIAL ISSUE: Chinese Literature John Balcom Guest Editor Introduction....................................................................................................................................................................................................1 John Balcom On the Role of the Translator.......................................................................................................................................................................2 N. G. D. Malmqvist An Interview with Burton Watson ..............................................................................................................................................................7 John Balcom Lu Yu (Lu You), Twelve Poems...............................................................................................................................................................13 Burton Watson Bo Juyi and Guan Panpan: the Swallow Tower Poems ...........................................................................................................................19 Geoffrey R. Waters On Li Bai’s “Jeweled Staircase Grievance” ..............................................................................................................................................22 Steve Bradbury Flirting with the Explicit: Euphemism and Eroticism in the Chinese Lyric ........................................................................................24 Mike Farman A Conversation with J. P. “Sandy” Seaton..............................................................................................................................................33 Steve Bradbury What Develops in a Dark Room Dazzles Brighter than Light: Resistance and the Translation of Chinese Poetry ..........................45 Simon Patton On a Poem by Bei Dao...............................................................................................................................................................................49 John Balcom Translating Ideogram into a Culture of Phonogram in Tae-Sok Oh’s Play Bellflower ....................................................................53 Hyung-Jin Lee Waiting for a Better Translation................................................................................................................................................................58 Nancy Tsai Book Reviews Poems of the Masters: China’s Classic Anthology of T’ang and Sung Dynasty Verse, tr. by Red Pine.............................................68 Reviewed by Mike Farman Big Breasts and Wide Hips, by Mo Yan, tr. by Howard Goldblatt....................................................................................................70 Reviewed by Christopher Lupke Contributors .............................................................................................................................................................................................74 Introduction by John Balcom, Guest Editor The Chinese literary tradition extends uninterrupted from Hyung-Jin Lee has contributed an article on translating early in the first millennium B.C. to the present. The trans- Chinese within Korean drama. The article will be of inter- lation of Chinese literature into English largely dates from est to anyone who works with multiple-language texts or the Victorian era, with scholarship and translation really texts containing dialect. blossoming in the 1960s and ’70s onward. For the transla- tor, the field of endeavor is vast and it is impossible to Nancy Tsai provides us with a translator’s-eye view of the cover all facets of it. In this issue there is a vague focus on fiction of Ha Jin. This is a perspective that is unknown to the translation of poetry, because it is still perhaps the most his readers save those in the field of Chinese literature. It is popular genre among translators. We include two pieces on an important essay for the perspective it offers on transla- Tang dynasty poetry (Waters and Bradbury), one on Song tion as well as for expanding the dimensions of the critical dynasty ci (Farman), and two on the modern period (Patton discourse on a contemporary novelist. and Balcom). Two book reviews of translated works of significance fol- The issue begins with a general essay on the translation of low: Mike Farman’s review of Poems of the Masters, Red Chinese literature by N. G. D. Malmqvist of the Swedish Pine’s complete translation of the classical anthology Qian- Academy. Professor Malmqvist was trained as a linguist but jiashi, and Christopher Lupke’s review of Ma Yuan’s Big has spent a good deal of time engaged in the translation of Breasts and Wide Hips, translated by Howard Goldblatt. literature. Lastly, in addition to thanking all the contributors, I would We are also pleased to include interviews with two of to- like to express my gratitude to a number of institutions and day’s foremost translators of classical Chinese literature: individuals. This issue of Translation Review devoted to Chi- Burton Watson and J. P. Seaton. Burton Watson is perhaps nese literature grew out of a conversation with Rainer the best-known translator of classical Chinese literature in Schulte at an ALTA conference; I would like to thank him the last half century. He has produced what are now widely for his unflagging support and patience. Thanks also to the considered to be the standard English translations of the Donald Keene Center at Columbia University for provid- major works of Chinese history, philosophy, and poetry. ing the photo of Burton Watson. I also would like to ac- (As a side note, Burton informed me in a recent letter that knowledge Lucas Klein for allowing us to reprint Steve he is currently at work on a new translation of Confucius Bradbury’s article from his online journal Cipher Journal. for Columbia University.) He has also contributed twelve (Anyone interested in literature in translation will certainly new translations of poems by the Song dynasty poet Lu want to have a look at the journal.) Rich DeRouen has You. Sandy Seaton is a translator of classical poetry whose spent a good deal of time on this issue, working to over- fine ear and sensitive translations of Ou-yang Xiu and come a good many difficulties. I would also like to thank Yuan Mei, among others, have a following among general Jingbo Shen, my graduate assistant at the Monterey Insti- readers, poets, and scholars. He has also collaborated with tute of International Studies, for her assistance in preparing Ursula LeGuin on her translation of the Lao Tzu and co- some of the manuscripts. My final thanks go to Lo Fu for translated with Sam Hamill selections from Chuang Tzu. contributing the topically appropriate calligraphy that We are pleased to be able to include a selection of his graces the cover of this issue. translations as well. Translation Review 1 On the Role of the Translator by N. G. D. Malmqvist I would like to state at the outset that my main field is Chi- use of terms that had gained acceptance in the Confucian nese linguistics. My scholarly production is confined to the and Daoist schools of thought. Dao, which stood for the fields of dialectology, historical phonology, archaic and cosmic order of the Confucianists and for the Absolute in modern Chinese syntax, and semantics. I have no formal Daoist thought, had to make do for the complex Sanskrit training in the disciplines of literary theory and criticism, term Dharma (“the Law,” “the Teaching”). The Confucian nor have I entered into a serious study of translatology. I term xiaoshun (“filial obedience”), had to make do for San- have read a fair amount of Chinese literature – ancient, skrit sila (“moral conduct”). Because these translations pos- medieval, modern, and contemporary. In the last fifty years sibly could entice some Confucians and Daoists to join the I have engaged in translation and consider myself an ama- imported religion, they were at the same time instrumental teur translator. (I refer you to the second definition of the in distorting the Buddhist credo. term “amateur” in the Oxford English Dictionary: “One who cultivates anything as a pastime, as distinguished from Words are labels that we stick on all things and phenomena one who prosecutes it professionally.”) around us and within us. Sometimes we find a fairly close concordance, in different languages, between the labels and In the early 1950s, all dogs disappeared from the streets of the reality that they denote. But on the whole, I tend to be- Chinese cities. The shaggy Airedale bitch that followed me lieve in Wittgenstein’s thesis that language delimits our per- to my office every day during a three-year stay in Peking in ception of the world around us. I firmly believe that the the mid 1950s naturally created quite a stir: “Have you Swedish word gul, the German word gelb, the English word seen! A lion!” “A tiger!” “A wolf!” “A lamb!” cried the yellow, and the Chinese word huang cover different fields of children in the street. The Chinese word for “dog” (gou), the underlying physical reality. Even the most skilled and which can be traced back to the fourth century before our conscientious translator will sometimes have to content era, had suddenly become a nonsense-word in the language himself or herself with translating labels, not the underlying of the children, as an effect of the decision by the Chinese reality. health authorities