I bought this book ages ago when it was published, but then had a friend borrow it and she only just got it back to me (graduate students, oh well). It was a really interesting read, I don’t know much about Chinese poetry or translation as it’s one of those arts that is frequently overlooked. Or put another way, you only notice it when it goes wrong. In addition to a small collection of poems from each of the poets, there are short essays that talk about the process that Wang went through with each of the different works. Each poem additionally is printing in both Chinese and in English for comparison.
The book spans quite a few ages, it starts with Qiu Jin’s poetry. She was a poet and early feminist who was known for breaking gender norms. She’s also how I first heard about this work, I knew that Wang’s work was stolen by the British Museum and I was part of the group that helped her fight that. Wang’s experiences are touched on with her essay on this section, it’s interesting hearing about that again from her perspective.
Most interesting to me was hearing about how there are so many different processes for translating depending on the style of the poet. She talks a lot about preserving allusions and meanings that English audiences wouldn’t pick up on, and keeping elements of ambiguity as well. I’ve heard Wang talk about how translating can be like writing poetry as well, and now looking at the poems she’s referring to really makes that clear, and more real, in my mind. It’s not something that is a one-to-one, there’s so much work happening below the surface here!
I really like to support ace writers, and this was a great
book to finally get to. It isn’t entirely poetry, if that isn’t your thing, but
it is really interesting to hear about the process of translating poetry.
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