Comments on: Lame-ass Translations 1: Dante’s Inferno

By: Brendan O'Kane

Brendan O'Kane — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 19:05:48 +0000

Hi, Edward — sorry for responding so late. The short answer to your question, I think, is “yes.” There is a longer answer, though:

My Chinese is, of course, not native, so there may be things that I’m missing, but the Huang and Tian translations both seem to me to be missing quite a lot. Simply throwing in poetic terms is of course not enough for something like this, but the ultimate goal of translation is to recreate for the reader the experience that one has when reading the text in the native language, and in that respect I do believe that both the Huang and Tian translations are sorely lacking. Tian Dewang clearly understands the text very intimately, but his translation reads (to me, at least) more like a reference gloss than an actual translation.
Huang’s is just plain bad: it is shot through with inaccuracies, reads clumsily (again, to me), and fails utterly to give any impression of the beauty of the original. Rhyme is not the end-all be-all here, but I do believe that some degree of poesy is not too much to ask.

By: Edward

Edward — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 14:35:07 +0000

Brendan, I may be wrong with this comment but is your Chinese so good that you are able to accurately judge whether a learned *Chinese* professor and professional’s translation is “Lame-ass”, perhaps it isn’t intended to rhyme, as you said it wouldn’t be too difficult if that was the desired result. And using “literary” vocabulary doesn’t necessarily make something more poetic.

By: Nan Ke

Nan Ke — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 13:08:14 +0000

Excuse me, it was the like to lecture to people part of me.
Btw, 殿后 sounded a bit tough to put there.

By: Nan Ke

Nan Ke — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 12:49:45 +0000

Hi guys,
About 殿后
1. As Adj., 殿means后 (rear, at the rear), e.g.
殿,后也。——《广雅》
奔而殿。——《论语·雍也》。集解引马注:“殿在军后。前曰启,后曰殿。”
2. As verb, 殿means guard, 殿后means rear guard or bring up the rear. e.g.
命李进诚将三千人殿其后。——《资治通鉴·唐宪宗元和十二年》
of course,殿as none, has other meanings like palace.

Here is my version of the Commedia:
我们于是前行，他前，我后
直到一种美景，穿过圆洞，闪耀天空
我们这才，重又见到繁星密布
Lame too, but I tried :)

By: Nikeroo

Nikeroo — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 00:33:15 +0000

Hehe, I think that there are plenty of worthy causes in need of your translation prowess! Menus in restaurants being the one that immediately springs to mind!

By: whatever

whatever — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 15:30:48 +0000

Fricking indoctrination education program, who in the world use 殿后 except the military, the paramilitaries, and lame-ass wannabe political “armies”.

I might start moonlighting as a translator starting from today. Bloody hell, am i pissed or what.

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 04:19:35 +0000

And sorry about forgetting to close that tag, too! It looks like everything below it has been afflicted with a bad case of italics.

Anyway, you’re doing great stuff here. I was so pleased to finally be able to read one of your Chinese entries (”是否”) the other day, without resorting to Wenlin. I hope that means my reading skills are improving…

And it’s funny, because, Chaves is totally a hard-right conservative, but I find myself agreeing with him on so many things when I think about them too much. That’s even though I consider myself very liberal. He’d definitely love the fact that someone is blogging about Chinese rhyme schemes, but I’m not sure what he’d have to say about your last post.

By: Brendan O'Kane

Brendan O'Kane — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 05:38:29 +0000

Hey, Karen! I hadn’t even noticed the 殿后, but yeah — that does sound awkward.

Matt — Don’t know him, I’m afraid, but he sounds like my kind of guy. I’ve long thought that there needed to be more good verse translations of classical Chinese poetry.

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 03:31:18 +0000

Hi Brendan,

I\’m curious, do you happen to know Professor Chaves from George Washington University? He was the best teacher I had in my whole undergraduate experience and I\’ve tried to keep in touch with him since then. Anyway, he just published a translation of 300 poems by the Tang poet 張籍, in \”rhymed or half-rhymed translations, tracking the original rhyme schemes.\” there\’s a 15-page prologue in which he explains why now is the \”right time\” to produce rhymed translations of Chinese verse like this and he mentions things like terza rima and specifically Dante\’s Commedia. Just wondering if you two are channelling the same spirits or if you in fact have some connection to him. (And sorry for the weird-ass question!)

By: karen

karen — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 04:27:08 +0000

Huang has some guts in using the word ‘dian’ in a piece of work that goes into print. It cracks me up. In those sitcoms of police and bandits, you would hear, ‘hey, you go first, I’ll back you up’ (Ni Zou Xian, Wo Dian Hou)