{"id":3596,"date":"2016-12-05T09:30:53","date_gmt":"2016-12-05T01:30:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=3596"},"modified":"2016-12-02T22:43:56","modified_gmt":"2016-12-02T14:43:56","slug":"jeffrey-yang-on-translation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=3596","title":{"rendered":"Jeffrey Yang on Translation"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>Jeffrey Yang, poet, editor, and translator of Uyghur and Chinese poetry (both classical and modern, including <\/span>Liu Xiaobo\u2019s \u5218\u6653\u6ce2<\/span> June Fourth Elegies<\/em>, Su Shi\u2019s\u00a0\u8607\u8efe <\/span>East Slope<\/em>, and Bei Dao\u2019s \u5317\u5c9b<\/span> forthcoming memoir\u00a0City Gate, Open Up<\/em>) answers questions as part of Words Without Borders<\/em>‘ “Translator Relay<\/a>“:<\/p>\n

You are a translator, but also an award-winning poet. Can you speak about how your work as a poet informs your translations? And in turn, do you find that your work as a translator informs your poetry?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I try not to dissect this back and forth too much as the two so naturally fit together, like Adam and Eve. Both require careful attention to the musical qualities of language. The two can also overtly overlap, in that translating a poem is akin to writing a poem in a new language, or when writing a poem includes translated lines from another language. Both practices thrive in obscurity and with patient tinkering at the minutest level of word and line. As the recent Nobel Laureate said fifty years ago, \u201cPeople have one great blessing\u2014obscurity.\u201d Each revels in an economy of language while persisting outside of the day-to-day economy, where profit never ventures upon its threshold<\/em>. The one feeds the other in body and spirit, as with the other arts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Click on the image above for the full Q & A.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jeffrey Yang, poet, editor, and translator of Uyghur and Chinese poetry (both classical and modern, including Liu Xiaobo\u2019s \u5218\u6653\u6ce2 June Fourth Elegies, Su Shi\u2019s\u00a0\u8607\u8efe East Slope, and Bei Dao\u2019s \u5317\u5c9b forthcoming memoir\u00a0City Gate, Open Up) answers questions as part of … 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":[50,45,553,1724],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8srwF-W0","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3818,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=3818","url_meta":{"origin":3596,"position":0},"title":"Graywolf Press on the Death of Liu Xiaobo","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"July 14, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Liu Xiaobo\u00a0\u5218\u6653\u6ce2, human rights activist, 2010 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and poet, died on July 13, 2017--less than a month after he was granted medical parole for a terminal liver cancer diagnosis. Graywolf Press, which published his poetry and that of his wife Liu Xia\u00a0\u5218\u971e in English translation, now has\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.graywolfpress.org\/sites\/default\/files\/Liu%20Xiaobo.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":972,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=972","url_meta":{"origin":3596,"position":1},"title":"Russell Scott Valentino on Making World Literature","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"June 11, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Over at The Iowa Review editor & translator Russell Scott Valentino has a quick post about the Banff International Literary Translation Centre titled Making World Literature. Here's a paragraph: Yesterday we talked at some length about methods of reading, preparing a text, working with authors, and revising. It is sometimes\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":3847,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=3847","url_meta":{"origin":3596,"position":2},"title":"ARB on Bei Dao’s City Gate, Open Up","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"August 25, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"London-based poet Jennifer Wong's review of\u00a0City Gate, Open Up, by Bei Dao \u5317\u5cf6 and translated by Jeffrey Yang, is now up at\u00a0Asian Review of Books. \"Born and raised in Beijing,\" the review begins, \"Bei Dao spent decades in exile in Europe because of his alleged involvement in the Tiananmen Massacre\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":1047,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=1047","url_meta":{"origin":3596,"position":3},"title":"Fiona Sze-Lorrain on Jeffrey Yang’s translatoin of Liu Xiaobo’s June Fourth Elegies","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"July 20, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Fiona Sze-Lorrain's review of Jeffrey Yang's translation of June Fourth Elegies \u5ff5\u5ff5\u516d\u56db by Liu Xiaobo \u5218\u6653\u6ce2 is now up on Words Without Borders. Strangely, her review doesn't mention Yang by name, but she does discuss the translation, calling it \"a stylistic rendering of Liu Xiaobo\u2019s plainspoken language, which at times\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":2616,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=2616","url_meta":{"origin":3596,"position":4},"title":"Not Altogether an Illusion: Lucas Klein on Burton Watson","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"May 15, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"As part of a Translation & World Literature feature, World Literature Today has published my short article \"Not Altogether an Illusion: Translation and Translucence in the Work of Burton Watson.\" Here's an excerpt: Since Chinese poetry started being translated into English, poets and sinologists have presented poetry and sinology as\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.worldliteraturetoday.org\/sites\/default\/files\/2014\/May\/klein_watson_illustration.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1286,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=1286","url_meta":{"origin":3596,"position":5},"title":"More Views on Mo Yan","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"October 16, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"New Nobel Prize-winner for Literature Mo Yan \u83ab\u8a00 has, for obvious reasons, become a hot topic of discussion. I've assembled some of the analysis that's recently appeared online in various forms. First, my highschool classmate & translator from Swedish B J Epstein has written about the Nobel from an outsider's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/2-1-DCfPwqs\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3596"}],"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=3596"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3598,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3596\/revisions\/3598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}