Translated by Sherry Liu

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.

[avatar user="sliu" size="thumbnail" align="left" ]Shery Liu[/avatar]

[bg_collapse view="link" color="#4a4949" icon="arrow" expand_text="Translator’s Note(English)" collapse_text="Hide" ]

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.[/bg_collapse]

 

[bg_collapse view="link" color="#4a4949" icon="arrow" expand_text="Translator’s Note (Chinese)" collapse_text="Hide" ]

这是我第一次比较正式的把一首中文的诗翻译成英语。中国古代的诗有的时候比较难读懂，更不要说翻译了，因为有一些词语和语句在古代的意思和现在不太一样。因为我对古诗词没有特别擅长，所以这次的翻译选择的是一首比较简短的诗，但是翻译起来还是有诸多不顺。《周夜书所见》这首诗懂起来比较简单，我最开始也很快用比较简单明了的英语把它翻译了一遍，但是要保持翻译后的诗和原诗结构相似并且语句优美就相对要困难了很多。我最开始第一个目标是保持每一排的意思不变，结果翻译出来之后发现前面三排的第一个单词的首字母都是一样的，而原诗是没有这样的结构的，所以我不得不改掉一些我花了不少心思才选出来的单词，即使删减过程中我有很多的不舍。翻译这首诗前后改了很多遍，但是我对最终成果还是比较满意的，希望在读我的翻译的你也喜欢[/bg_collapse]