Notes on Translation
You encounter two people when reading poetry in translation, the poet and the translator. What you actually read is somewhere between them. Or, as Red Pine more eloquently said, the translator stands a few feet away from the poet in a softly lit hall, imitating the steps of the poet’s dance. Any immediacy between poet and translator is further tempered when the poems are in Classical Chinese, a language as ancestral as Old English. But if you can recognize the logographic characters and put a little effort into understanding the grammar structures, it’s not impossible to make translations of your own, even if it is more like singing in a karaoke bar than it is cutting a record deal.
The most popular English translators of Chinese poetry in the 21st century are two guys named David Hinton and Red Pine (government name Bill Porter). Both live in the American hinterlands, Red Pine somewhere out in Washington and Hinton in Vermont. Of the two, Hinton is more frequently recognized in literary circles. He has prestigious prizes and his book covers have blurbs declaring him the preeminent translator of the modern age. The Japanese translator Hiroaki Sato, renowned in his own right, mentions only David Hinton by name in the introduction to his book about Cold Mountain. This, despite Red Pine being the only one of the two to translate Cold Mountain’s complete works. It makes me fear that Red Pine, whose author photo looks like a character you’d fight at the Chinese stage in Virtua Fighter, has been relegated to the American Buddhist shelf of the bookstore. This would be a shame, as I found Red Pine’s translations had a warm and earthy quality without abandoning what I perceived as the poems’ essence. He is much quicker to find an English approximation than to use clumsy calques like “dark-enigma” or “original-nature” favored by Hinton. Likewise, where Hinton’s introductions are often esoteric and dense explanations of Buddhist and Taoist concepts, Red Pine is more likely to write about a trip he took to China where he tried to find the site of a hermit’s hut on the side of a mountain. I should note that outside this excursion of mine, I don’t travel in the world of translation. I’m probably manufacturing a feud between the two. But ask where my heart lies and I’ll tell you I’ve only ever seen one person use their acknowledgments page to thank their local food bank and the IRS earned income tax credit program, and it was not David Hinton.
Further back than Hinton and Red Pine, there are two camps of translators. There are the Arthur Waley and Burton Watson types, trailblazing and rigorous scholars who brought the West’s understanding of Chinese and Japanese culture immeasurably forward, even if imperfectly. Then there are the comparative outsiders. Artsy types like Kenneth Rexroth and Ezra Pound who brought the West’s appreciation of Eastern culture immeasurably forward, even if imperfectly. The latter group casts the darker shadow, their works carrying an othering exoticism twinned with a genuine love for the culture that’s reflected in their loose, interpretive translations. The more I read, the more I sympathized with some of their crude and problematic gestures. Sometimes these poems feel close enough to touch.
The most popular English translators of Chinese poetry in the 21st century are two guys named David Hinton and Red Pine (government name Bill Porter). Both live in the American hinterlands, Red Pine somewhere out in Washington and Hinton in Vermont. Of the two, Hinton is more frequently recognized in literary circles. He has prestigious prizes and his book covers have blurbs declaring him the preeminent translator of the modern age. The Japanese translator Hiroaki Sato, renowned in his own right, mentions only David Hinton by name in the introduction to his book about Cold Mountain. This, despite Red Pine being the only one of the two to translate Cold Mountain’s complete works. It makes me fear that Red Pine, whose author photo looks like a character you’d fight at the Chinese stage in Virtua Fighter, has been relegated to the American Buddhist shelf of the bookstore. This would be a shame, as I found Red Pine’s translations had a warm and earthy quality without abandoning what I perceived as the poems’ essence. He is much quicker to find an English approximation than to use clumsy calques like “dark-enigma” or “original-nature” favored by Hinton. Likewise, where Hinton’s introductions are often esoteric and dense explanations of Buddhist and Taoist concepts, Red Pine is more likely to write about a trip he took to China where he tried to find the site of a hermit’s hut on the side of a mountain. I should note that outside this excursion of mine, I don’t travel in the world of translation. I’m probably manufacturing a feud between the two. But ask where my heart lies and I’ll tell you I’ve only ever seen one person use their acknowledgments page to thank their local food bank and the IRS earned income tax credit program, and it was not David Hinton.
Further back than Hinton and Red Pine, there are two camps of translators. There are the Arthur Waley and Burton Watson types, trailblazing and rigorous scholars who brought the West’s understanding of Chinese and Japanese culture immeasurably forward, even if imperfectly. Then there are the comparative outsiders. Artsy types like Kenneth Rexroth and Ezra Pound who brought the West’s appreciation of Eastern culture immeasurably forward, even if imperfectly. The latter group casts the darker shadow, their works carrying an othering exoticism twinned with a genuine love for the culture that’s reflected in their loose, interpretive translations. The more I read, the more I sympathized with some of their crude and problematic gestures. Sometimes these poems feel close enough to touch.
Eliot Weinberger’s Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei is the best way to trace the evolution of early translators manhandling these poems into Western forms to later ones stretching English to approximate the originals. Weinberger takes different translations of the same Wang Wei poem and sets them side by side with sharp commentary. It’s a book for seeing how each attempt is additive, even in failure.
In that spirit, I close with my own attempt at translating Wang Wei’s Deer Park.
In that spirit, I close with my own attempt at translating Wang Wei’s Deer Park.
Empty mountain, no one to see
But the sounds of people, their echoes
Sunlight backs deep into the forest
Caught again on the green moss above