"...the only reflections in the lake were a slash of causeway, a dot of pavilion, a mustard seed of a boat and the two or three specks of ourselves aboard it."
Really glad to hear that you, specifically, liked it! The Liu Zongyuan poem is great -- but I wouldn't really call what I've got here translations yet; just byproducts of the reading process.
At the risk of getting out over my skis as a mere hobbyist... I am really struck by the imagery of the second line because I can't help but think the 滅 so neatly plays off the 雪 and want to read it as effaced or blotted out in the sense of the snow erasing all evidence of human and animal life. Over that the Language Log I also find the insistence on translating 千山 as "thousand mountains" a little forced in so many of the examples. Is there any reason we can't just read it as 'all the hills'? Something like "All the mountain birds are vanished. Every footpath blotted out."
Or maybe I am trying artificially to fit the "clipped" notes of those three characters into a sense of clipped English diction.
The problem with "All the mountain birds are vanished" and "Every footpath blotted out" is a problem with English, I think -- I say this to pick nits, not because I have any good solution. 絕 and 滅 are stative verbs, so saying "the flight of the birds is 絕" doesn't necessarily imply in Chinese that something is responsible for the state of being 絕, in the same way that saying "the stone is red" doesn't necessarily imply that some agency has made it so. 絕 and 滅 and 雪 are definitely linked by more than rhyme -- it's the snow that's responsible for the states of being cut-off and covered-over -- but there's a risk of making that association stronger in translation than I think it is in Chinese. "The birds are vanished" might work as long as people don't think of magicians, but is a little fusty. Something in the neighborhood of "gone / vanished," maybe?
Translating 千 and 萬 as "Thousand" and "Ten thousand/myriad" is pure Sinological translatese throat-clearing -- I did the same thing in my first draft here. 千 and 萬 mean the same thing, and it's somewhere in between "all" and "more than a couple of the following items." 萬 mostly just means "千 except you've said 千 already." There should be something to represent them in the translation, but it shouldn't be literal (like how many mountains do you think they have down in Yongzhou?) and probably doesn't have to be a number at all.
I'm starting to feel a bit of bolshy rage with these landlords who go out into nature in pursuit of solitude - only with two or three porters and boatmen in tow, who apparently don't count as human beings.
My feeling for 钓 is that it does like to have something after it, but it doesn't have to be a direct object. A locative works equally well, so there's a lot of 钓台ing and 钓江头ing, for example. The combinations 钓雪 or 钓冰 don't appear in the 全唐诗.
I certainly think that the 蓑笠翁 is intensely visual, and is describing some sort of shift in focus. I think of it as a zoom in, which is obviously very anachronistic, but given the kinds of paintings that we believe they were making at the time, I wonder if the wording is reproducing brushstrokes. One stroke for the boat, one for the cape, one for the hat, and there's your man (no more strokes required).
The brushstroke thing hadn't occurred to me, but that works really well, even if it doesn't have a tidy parallel in the closing line.
And I'm always down for a bit of bolshy rage -- now more than ever -- but I think part of what makes Zhang Dai so likable is that he's self-aware enough to tell these stories with more than a tinge of "can you believe what an asshole I was?" That image of quiet and solitude is the high point of the anecdote, and the boatman's remark is the punchline, but I think Zhang also finds some humor in having been beaten to the quiet and solitude by a couple of slightly distasteful tourists from Nanjing.
絕: extinct 滅:extinquished, maybe? And, to a Chinese, “fishing amid snow” is definitely more probable than “fishing for snow”, orders of magnitude more probable. 😊
I really enjoyed this post!!! Loved the poem and your translations…
Really glad to hear that you, specifically, liked it! The Liu Zongyuan poem is great -- but I wouldn't really call what I've got here translations yet; just byproducts of the reading process.
It was so fun to read! I immediately got my notebook out and started playing around ❤️
At the risk of getting out over my skis as a mere hobbyist... I am really struck by the imagery of the second line because I can't help but think the 滅 so neatly plays off the 雪 and want to read it as effaced or blotted out in the sense of the snow erasing all evidence of human and animal life. Over that the Language Log I also find the insistence on translating 千山 as "thousand mountains" a little forced in so many of the examples. Is there any reason we can't just read it as 'all the hills'? Something like "All the mountain birds are vanished. Every footpath blotted out."
Or maybe I am trying artificially to fit the "clipped" notes of those three characters into a sense of clipped English diction.
The problem with "All the mountain birds are vanished" and "Every footpath blotted out" is a problem with English, I think -- I say this to pick nits, not because I have any good solution. 絕 and 滅 are stative verbs, so saying "the flight of the birds is 絕" doesn't necessarily imply in Chinese that something is responsible for the state of being 絕, in the same way that saying "the stone is red" doesn't necessarily imply that some agency has made it so. 絕 and 滅 and 雪 are definitely linked by more than rhyme -- it's the snow that's responsible for the states of being cut-off and covered-over -- but there's a risk of making that association stronger in translation than I think it is in Chinese. "The birds are vanished" might work as long as people don't think of magicians, but is a little fusty. Something in the neighborhood of "gone / vanished," maybe?
Translating 千 and 萬 as "Thousand" and "Ten thousand/myriad" is pure Sinological translatese throat-clearing -- I did the same thing in my first draft here. 千 and 萬 mean the same thing, and it's somewhere in between "all" and "more than a couple of the following items." 萬 mostly just means "千 except you've said 千 already." There should be something to represent them in the translation, but it shouldn't be literal (like how many mountains do you think they have down in Yongzhou?) and probably doesn't have to be a number at all.
Fascinating problems, actually!
I'm starting to feel a bit of bolshy rage with these landlords who go out into nature in pursuit of solitude - only with two or three porters and boatmen in tow, who apparently don't count as human beings.
My feeling for 钓 is that it does like to have something after it, but it doesn't have to be a direct object. A locative works equally well, so there's a lot of 钓台ing and 钓江头ing, for example. The combinations 钓雪 or 钓冰 don't appear in the 全唐诗.
I certainly think that the 蓑笠翁 is intensely visual, and is describing some sort of shift in focus. I think of it as a zoom in, which is obviously very anachronistic, but given the kinds of paintings that we believe they were making at the time, I wonder if the wording is reproducing brushstrokes. One stroke for the boat, one for the cape, one for the hat, and there's your man (no more strokes required).
The brushstroke thing hadn't occurred to me, but that works really well, even if it doesn't have a tidy parallel in the closing line.
And I'm always down for a bit of bolshy rage -- now more than ever -- but I think part of what makes Zhang Dai so likable is that he's self-aware enough to tell these stories with more than a tinge of "can you believe what an asshole I was?" That image of quiet and solitude is the high point of the anecdote, and the boatman's remark is the punchline, but I think Zhang also finds some humor in having been beaten to the quiet and solitude by a couple of slightly distasteful tourists from Nanjing.
Brendan - two for the price of one! More Zhang Dai, please.
Hope you're not too snowed under!!
There is assuredly more Zhang Dai in the pipeline!
絕: extinct 滅:extinquished, maybe? And, to a Chinese, “fishing amid snow” is definitely more probable than “fishing for snow”, orders of magnitude more probable. 😊