{"id":2572,"date":"2014-04-29T09:30:00","date_gmt":"2014-04-29T01:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=2572"},"modified":"2014-04-24T10:39:31","modified_gmt":"2014-04-24T02:39:31","slug":"translating-chinese-poetry-is-hard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=2572","title":{"rendered":"Translating Chinese poetry is hard"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\u566b\u5401\u56b1\u5371\u4e4e\u9ad8\u54c9!<\/p>\n

At Language Log<\/a>, Victor Mair posts (pictured here) a handwritten translation of a famous Li Bai \u674e\u767d 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 Sh\u01d4 d\u00e0o n\u00e1n \u8700\u9053\u96be (‘The Way to Shu Is Hard’) into English.”<\/p>\n

For good measure, Mair posts a translation I did of the poem when I was a college senior, and published on CipherJournal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Click the image above for the full Language Log post, and the fruitful discussion that follows.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u566b\u5401\u56b1\u5371\u4e4e\u9ad8\u54c9! At Language Log, Victor Mair posts (pictured here) a handwritten translation of a famous Li Bai \u674e\u767d poem, whose translator “said he was caught doing English homework in a Chinese class by his Chinese teacher. The teacher was angry … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3],"tags":[508,454],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8srwF-Fu","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4877,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=4877","url_meta":{"origin":2572,"position":0},"title":"Madeleine Thien on Chinese Translation and “Poems Without an \u2018I\u2019”","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"September 28, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"\u2018\"Poems Without an \u2018I,\u2019\" 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 \u2018I,\u2019\" Madeleine Thien's review of three books, The Banished Immortal: A Life of Li Bai [\u674e\u767d] (Pantheon, 2019)\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xichuanpoetry.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/thien_2-100820.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xichuanpoetry.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/thien_2-100820.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xichuanpoetry.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/thien_2-100820.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xichuanpoetry.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/thien_2-100820.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xichuanpoetry.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/thien_2-100820.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xichuanpoetry.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/thien_2-100820.jpg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":4075,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=4075","url_meta":{"origin":2572,"position":1},"title":"Chinese Poetry of the Cup?","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"May 21, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"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 \u767d\u9152, \"the Chinese king of liquors ... made primarily with\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/supchina.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Li-Bai-111-drinking-alone-British-Museum-812x500.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2436,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=2436","url_meta":{"origin":2572,"position":2},"title":"Chinese Literature Today","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"March 5, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The current issue of Chinese Literature Today features: Chinese Poets Writing in English (Qiu Xiaolong \u88d8\u5c0f\u9f99, Yun Wang, Wai-lim Yip \u8449\u7dad\u5ec9) Non-Chinese Poets Writing in Chinese (Jami Proctor-Xu, Denis Mair, Afaa Michael Weaver [translated by Lucas Klein]) Special features on Yu Jian \u4e8e\u575a and Wai-lim Yip Book reviews of Jacob\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ou.edu\/clt\/02-02\/images\/CLT_Issue5_Cover_6.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3720,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=3720","url_meta":{"origin":2572,"position":3},"title":"Victor Mair again on Burton Watson (1925 \u2013 2017)","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"May 3, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"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. 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MZ: The hardest part of translation is to go inside the mind of the poet and find\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3671,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=3671","url_meta":{"origin":2572,"position":5},"title":"John Bradley on Burton Watson (1925 \u2013 2017)","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"April 10, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"In honor of Burton Watson\u2019s 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\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Burton Watson remembrance"","block_context":{"text":"Burton Watson remembrance","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=1774"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2572"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2572"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2574,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2572\/revisions\/2574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}