Tag Archives: Victor Mair

Madeleine Thien on Chinese Translation and “Poems Without an ‘I’”

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‘”Poems Without an ‘I,’” Madeleine Thien on Li Bai and Du Fu in Ha Jin and David Hinton

The new issue of the New York Review of Books features “Poems Without an ‘I,’” Madeleine Thien’s review of three books, The Banished Immortal: A Life of Li Bai [李白] (Pantheon, 2019) by Ha Jin 哈金 and The Selected Poems of Tu Fu [杜甫]: Expanded and Newly Translated (New Directions, 2020) and Awakened Cosmos: The Mind of Classical Chinese Poetry (Shambhala, 2019) by David Hinton.

Thien’s is a very informed and informative piece, but as Victor Mair points out on Language Log, even as she’s reviewing translations of Chinese poetry, she seems to believe that translation of Chinese poetry is not really possible:

The essential experience of Chinese poetry is all but untranslatable. Eliot Weinberger, Lucas Klein, Burton Watson, Stephen Owen, and David Hinton, among others, have set down superb translations, while noting that, in bringing Chinese poetry into English, more things go missing than in translations from other languages … Ha Jin describes a particular Li Bai poem as obtaining a beauty that “can be fully appreciated only in the Chinese.” Hinton observes that a particular line, severed from its radically different philosophical context, “fails absolutely in translation.” But the incommensurability of Chinese (logographic) and English (alphabetic) written systems begins the moment a mark is made. Chinese ideograms are composed of strokes, and each of the brushstrokes references others.

I love being put in a list with some of my heroes as having “set down superb translations,” but I cringe at the remark that the “essential experience of Chinese poetry is all but untranslatable.” As Mair writes, “I have never been a fan of the view that Chinese poetry is untranslatable, or that any other genres of Chinese literature, for that matter, are untranslatable. Since I have done a huge amount of translation in my lifetime, if I accepted the notion that Chinese literature is untranslatable, I would long ago have made a gigantic fool of myself.” And I like what Red Pine (Bill Porter) writes, in the comments section to the Language Log post: “How absurd that Chinese poetry would be untranslatable, or anything for that matter. Poems don’t come with moonlight or wind, much less the effects of the wine. They’re just words, until the reader, or the translator comes along and brings them back to life.”

There’s more to Thien’s article than this, of course–and her piece is not the worst offender when it comes to articles mystifying Chinese or poetry written in that language–but it’s worth reiterating: Sure, there are aspects of poetry in Chinese or any language that don’t make it through to other languages well in most translations, but that doesn’t mean the poetry is “untranslatable.” As Maghiel van Crevel points out in an article called “Transgression as Rule” (in Kroll and Silk, eds., “At the Shores of the Sky”: Asian Studies for Albert Hoffstädt; Brill, 2020), “untranslatability” really means hypertranslatability. With more aspects to consider, there are more options for the translator to try out in rendering something from one language into another.

Translation isn’t impossible–it happens all the time. It’s perfection that’s impossible.

I should also add that it’s a strange thing to write “each time we see an ‘I’ in a translation of Tang poetry, it was almost certainly not in the original text” in a discussion of Li Bai–one of the most forceful users of the first-person pronoun in classical Chinese poetics.

Click on the links above to read the pieces in full.

Chinese Poetry of the Cup?

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As part of its Mingbai series (“a daily newsletter that drops knowledge on things ‘everyone in China knows, but almost nobody outside the country knows'”), SupChina has posted a feature on “Chinese poetry of the cup.”

First it introduces baijiu 白酒, “the Chinese king of liquors … made primarily with sorghum, although other bases like wheat and rice are often added to the mix.”

Then it asserts:

Some of China’s finest poets — perhaps even the finest — were admirers of the merry drink. Let’s take a look at Li Bai 李白, whose immortal poetry is learned by heart in every classroom across China … Li Bai lived during the Tang Dynasty (618-907), often known as China’s Golden Age. His poems were often about the beauty of friendship, the wonders of nature, and wine … One of Li Bai’s poems, “Drinking Alone Under the Moon” (月下独酌 yuè xià dúzhuó), is a particularly beautiful ode to the beloved drink.

The entry then quotes an “artful translation” by John Derbyshire, with the poem in simplified Chinese characters and pinyin transcription.

Among the flowers with wine beneath the sky
Alone I drink — no friend or kin, just me
I raise my cup to toast the moon on high
That’s two of us; my shadow makes it three

But… is there any evidence (other than a tipsy inference from Li Bai’s name) that Li Bai was drinking baijiu when he wrote his poems about drinking?

There’s a long tradition of referring to jiu 酒 as “wine” when translating classical Chinese poetry, and because of decorum, zui 醉, which means drunk, has often been translated euphemistically with phrases like “rapt with wine.” It’s good that SupChina isn’t passing on that misconception, but my understanding is that the archaeological record of medieval Chinese drinking vessels is that they were goblets, and that they were drinking something pretty much like what we refer to today as beer.

See what Stephen Owen has had to say about it:

“Do you really think [those warriors] are running around drinking out of little sake cups?” Owen asked his colleague. “These guys drank from huge flagons made of metal”–he has actually seen one–“and sloshed their ale down by the gallon.” Owen objects to the old “translation language,” partly because it creates a false image of a very effeminate, aged, and weak China, but also because it makes no distinction in language between the “high-sensibility” people and “the guys that ride horses, assassinate people, and drink flagons of ale.”

Take a look at the back pages of The True History of Tea, by Erling Hoh and Victor Mair, for more on medieval Chinese jiu.

Click the image for the SupChina article.

Victor Mair again on Burton Watson (1925 – 2017)

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On his own page at Language Log, Victor Mair has added to his earlier remembrance of Burton Watson:

Many of Watson’s works appeared under the under the imprint of Columbia University Press (CUP), and I have also had a long association with CUP. Our scholarly paths crossed again in the early 90s when Jennifer Crewe, my editor at Columbia, asked me to take a look at Watson’s translation of the Lotus Sutra, which she hoped to publish. Much as I admired Watson’s translations, I said to Jennifer, “Why would you want to do that? You already have Leon Hurvitz’s great translation of the Lotus. Why would you want to have two competing translations on your list?”

I was referring to the Scripture of the Lotus Blossom of the Fine Dharma, which had been published in 1976, and which I consider to be a work of genius. In it, Hurvitz (who was one of my teachers) had worked out a method whereby the reader could tell at a glance whether a given Buddhist term in Chinese had been translated or transcribed from the corresponding term in Sanskrit.

Jennifer confided in me, “But people can’t read the Hurvitz translation. You know what I mean, Victor. It’s only for specialists. I want a version of the Lotus that anyone can pick up and read.”

So I agreed to evaluate Watson’s manuscript, and I could see at once how vastly different and more accessible it was than Hurvitz’s. CUP went on to publish Watson’s translation and it has been a big success. Happily, both the Hurvitz Lotus and the Watson Lotus are both in print, each meeting the needs of a different readership: Hurvitz for the Indologists, Sinologists, and Buddhologists, and Watson for the literarily minded and anyone with an interest in Asian religions.

Just a word about Watson’s style: spare, yet elegant. Reading a translation by Burton Watson is like contemplating the creation of a master Scandinavian designer: the lines are clean, neat, and beautiful. He kept the blooming to a minimum.

Click on the link above for the full entry.

John Bradley on Burton Watson (1925 – 2017)

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In honor of Burton Watson’s passing, I am collecting statements and memories from friends and fans, to be posted as they come in. The following remembrance is by John Bradley, from his review of Salutations; a Festschrift for Burton Watson (Ahadada / Ekleksographia, 2015), originally published in Rain Taxi #81 (21.1, Spring 2016):

Empty hills, no one in sight,
only the sound of someone talking;
late sunlight enters the deep wood,
shining over the green moss again.

This famous poem by Chinese poet Wang Wei displays the craft not only of the author but also—we all too often forget—of the translator. Burton Watson translated this poem with such craft that some may say “That’s it?” as indeed a student of Lucas Klein’s did, as he relates in his essay “Translation and Translucence in the Work of Burton Watson,” one of the offerings in this festschrift.

Watson certainly deserves acclaim for the quality and the breadth of his Asian translators. His works are much too long to list here, but a few titles will give an idea of his productivity: Cold Mountain: 100 Poems by the T’ang Poet Han-shan, The Selected Poems of Du Fu, and the Complete Works of Chuang Tzu. These are just a fraction of his translations from classical Chinese works. Some of his translation from classical and modern Japanese literature include: From the Country of Eight Islands: An Anthology of Japanese Poetry (collaborating with Hiroaki Sato), Ryokan: Zen Monk-Poet of Japan, and Saigyo: Poems of a Mountain Home.

Salutations offers seventeen contributions, each by a different writer, with some of the texts consisting of scholarly papers on Asian literature, and others offering personal reminiscences of Burton Watson or poems dedicated to him. The scholarly papers cover such topics as “a cultural history of Wenren,” which, as Victor H. Mair and Timothy Clifford explain, refers to a “literary man” (22). While these papers would have interest to Asian scholars, for the non-specialist the personal memories of encounters with Burton Watson are more engaging.

… Perhaps the best remedy will be to turn to one of Burton Watson’s many Asian translations and savor his skill.

Contact me if you would like to add your own remembrance.

Victor Mair on Burton Watson (1925 – 2017)

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In honor of Burton Watson’s passing, I am collecting statements and memories from friends and fans, to be posted as they come in. The following remembrance is from Victor Mair, professor of Chinese at University of Pennsylvania:

Sometime around the mid-70s, I had the great, good fortune to be invited to a dinner at the home of my mentor, Patrick Hanan. Also in attendance that evening were James Hightower and Burton Watson. I distinctly recall, already at that time, my impression of Watson being a venerable scholar of enormous accomplishments. Yet think of all that he has accomplished since that time four decades ago!

Despite his stature as a preeminent translator, Burton displayed no pretensions whatsoever. He put me completely at my ease. We had a pleasant, relaxed conversation about how we both had gotten into the study of Chinese literature and our mutual joy in translating it well.

Contact me if you would like to add your own remembrance.

Salutations; a Festschrift for Burton Watson

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Salutations; a Festschrift for Burton WatsonAnnouncing, from Ahadada / Ekleksographia, Salutations; a Festschrift for Burton Watson.

Edited by Jesse Glass and Philip Williams, this collection of essays, articles, and poems about Chinese and Japanese literature and culture celebrates the illustrious scholarly career of Burton Watson, whose range of excellent literary translations into English from Japanese and classical Chinese is second to none. Over half of the book’s seventeen chapters are articles about Chinese or Japanese literature and culture with full scholarly apparatus; the remainder are tributes to Watson in the form of poetry or informal essays.

Topics include analysis of Watson’s skills as a translator and practical critic; a cultural history of Chinese literati; masterpieces of the Ming essayist Zhang Dai; revisiting David Hawkes’ interpretations of Du Fu’s poetry; China’s earliest science fiction from the late Qing; reflections on cultural change by the early Yuan Confucianist Hao Jing; the multi-dimensional symbolism in Hagiwara Sakutarô’s poetry; the fictional portrayal of a self-sacrificing female Chinese Buddhist saint; key patterns of arboreal imagery in the 300 Tang Poems anthology; and Japanese linked verse across the centuries.

Featuring contributions by Victor Mair, Robert Hegel, Hiroaki Sato, William Nienhauser, Jonathan Chaves, Lucas Klein, Hoyt Tillman, Yenna Wu, Yoko Danno, Hua Li, Duncan Campbell, Stephen Addiss, Robert Epp, Timothy Clifford, Philip Rowland, Sam Hamill, and Gary Snyder.

Click on the image for ordering information.

The Complete Sino-Platonic Papers for Free

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The entire run of Sino-Platonic Papers are now available for free download, including Jiaosheng Wang’s translations of The Complete Ci-Poems of Li Qingzhao 李清照 (1989), David McCraw’s Pursuing Zhuangzi as a Rhymester (1995), and Jonathan Ratcliffe on “The Mythos of the One-Eyed Man in Greek and Inner Asian Thought” (2014). From Victor Mair:

Sino-Platonic Papers began in 1986 and for its first twenty years remained a print publication.

In 2006, however, Sino-Platonic Papers became an electronic publication, with all new issues released on the Web for free. Since that time we have been gradually converting the print issues to PDFs so that they could also be made available for free to readers around the world. We are very pleased to announce that process is now complete–Two hundred and forty-nine and counting!

All issues of Sino-Platonic Papers are now available for free at www.sino-platonic.org.

We continue to publish new material, so check our website often to find our latest issues.

Victor Mair

Translating Chinese poetry is hard

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噫吁嚱危乎高哉!

At Language Log, Victor Mair posts (pictured here) a handwritten translation of a famous Li Bai 李白 poem, whose translator “said he was caught doing English homework in a Chinese class by his Chinese teacher. The teacher was angry and punished the student by making him translate Shǔ dào nán 蜀道难 (‘The Way to Shu Is Hard’) into English.”

For good measure, Mair posts a translation I did of the poem when I was a college senior, and published on CipherJournal.

Click the image above for the full Language Log post, and the fruitful discussion that follows.

Chris Livaccari on Overcoming Misconceptions about China

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chinaSalon.com posted an interview with Chris Livaccari of the Asia Society (New York) with a guided reading list of how to overcome misconceptions about China. Here’s how he begins his responses:

I recently asked some school kids, “If you had the opportunity to go to China today, what do you think you would see?” One of the students said there would be a lot of lanterns everywhere, a lot of red, and a lot of dragons. I thought, “Wow. If this kid stepped into Shanghai in 2012, he would really be bowled over.”

The books he mentions are Robert Ramsey’s The Languages of China, Joanna Waley-Cohen’s The Sextants of Beijing, Zhuangzi 莊子 as translated by Victor Mair (called Wandering on the Way), the stories of Lu Xun 魯迅 (the article links to William Lyell’s translations), and The Story of the Stone 石頭記 by Cao Xueqin 曹雪芹 and translated by David Hawkes and John Minford. Not surprisingly, his list contains no poetry. Perhaps one day somebody will compile a list like this and Xi Chuan will be on it.