Traduire

ETHICS OF POETRY IN TRANSLATION:
ON THREE ENGLISH VERSIONS OF
GU CHENG’S SELECTED POEMS
It was discovered that Chu and Golden’s version highly values Gu’s creative
intention and emphasizes a literal translation to convey the poetic subtlety, thus most
of their translation faithfully represents the aesthetic style and spirit of Gu’s original
work. In contrast, Allen’s translation is permeated with his own interpretation and
leads to such phenomena as over-translation and interpolation; while Crippen’s
translation is faithful and succinct in general but at times lacks precision and
accuracy in capturing the nuance of meaning. Therefore, it is preferable for future
translators of Chinese poetry to explicate the source text and the translation
strategies applied through an introduction and/or footnoting, so as to fulfill the
responsibilities of translator in terms of social and cross-cultural awareness and
reveal to target language readers the essence of the poetry as originally written.
GU CHENG AND MISTY POETRY IN CHINA
Although dying in the prime of life, Gu Cheng (1956-1993) is undoubtedly
the most legendary figure of contemporary Chinese poetry and one of the prominent
poets of Menglong shi 朦 朧 詩 , or “Misty poetry.” Before we proceed to the
comparison of three English versions of Gu Cheng’s selected poems, it is inevitable
to account for his relation with “Misty poetry” and the significance of this poetic
movement in both political and literary context.
The so-called “misty” or Jintian poets is a group of young poets emerged in
Beijing between 1978 and 1980. They lived through the cultural holocaust of
the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and published their work in
an underground literary journal Jintian《 今 天 》, or Today, founded by poets Bei Dao,
Mang Ke and the painter Huang Rui. 1 The publication of this journal is regarded as
an important part of the political movement known as “Democracy Wall” or
“Beijing Spring” in China. At a time of political upheaval, when Deng Xiaoping
came to power after Mao Zedong’s death in 1969 and the fall of the “Gang of Four”
in 1976, 2 Jintian poets revolted against the repression of socialist literary policies
1 Aaron Crippen, “Introduction,” Nameless Flowers: Selected Poems of Gu Cheng (New York: George
Braziller, 2005) 11.
2 Chu Chiyu and Seán Golden, “Afterword,” Gu Cheng: Selected Poems (Hong Kong: Rendition, 1990)
172-173.
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