In the moonless darkness, only a glimpse of fishing lamp Shimmering like a lonely firefly Adrift on a soft wind. The lake rippled, reflected The feeble glow a thousand starlights.
This translation by Sherry Liu is the winner of the Richmond Lattimore Prize for Poetic Translation in 2019. The prize is awarded in memory of Professor Lattimore (1906-1984), distinguished poet and translator of classical literature, who taught Greek at Bryn Mawr from 1935 until 1971.
This was my first time officially translating a Chinese poem into English. Understanding, let alone translating, ancient Chinese poems can sometimes be really difficult, as the same words could have been used differently a few hundred years ago. I knew I was not an expert at interpreting the more difficult poems, so I decided to start out with an easier and shorter text, but even then, the translation still went less smoothly than I had hoped. It did not take me long to understand the poem itself and translate the overall meanings to English but maintaining the stylistic choices of the poet was a major struggle for me. It took me some time to find what I thought was the best wording while having each translated line retain its original meanings, but I ended up having the first three lines start with words that had the same initial letter, which is not the case in the original poem, so I had to rearrange and cross out the words I had carefully picked, which I was unwilling to do but felt necessary. I went through two other major edits before getting to this final version, and I am happy with what I got and to share it with you.
