Traduire

TRADUIRE… INTERPRÉTER
original work’s form and content, tone and rhythm, style and spirit, as well as its
aesthetic function and literary significance. 1 In contrast, Sea of Dreams tends to
focus on the translators’ interpretations instead of “what might have been Gu
Cheng’s intent,” since the translator believes it is unlikely to recover and represent
the poet’s original state of mind, hence he mainly works on transcribing “what
occupied his mind” and his personal feelings in the immediate contemporary
condition, 2 which inevitably causes problems such as deviation in meaning,
under-translation, over-interpretation and interpolation, thus violating the ethic of
poetry translation for failing to achieve poetic approximation and convey equal
emotional effects. 3 As for Nameless Flowers, its translation is faithful and succinct
in general but at times lacks precision and accuracy in capturing the nuance of
meaning.
Considering that poetry is a highly intense and self-sufficient literary genre,
and that Gu Cheng is a poet write in a succinct style and highly individualistic
language, respecting and maintaining the original poetic structure, symbolic images
and metaphors through literal translation is inevitable. Subjective interpretation or
arbitrary supplement in poetry translation will simply expose the translator’s failure
in understanding and grasping the gist of work, hence voluntarily or involuntarily
sacrifice the terseness, the intensity, and the power of poetry.
Therefore, it is preferable for future translators of Chinese poetry to begin by
tracing the evolution of the poet’s style and setting up a skopos, since the translator’s
responsibility, ethic, and his translating approaches and strategies have to be
regulated by this goal. 4 In addition, it is recommendable to explicate the source text
and the translation strategies applied through an introduction and/or footnoting and
justify why certain modifications, changes or supplements are made in place of
literal translations, 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. Only by doing so can the translator breathe life into his
re-creation, and enable the original to be born anew. 5 This is truly what Walter
Benjamin means by maintaining the “afterlife” of the original through translation.
CHEN Yen-hsiu
Center for General Education, Vanung University - Taiwan
yenhsiu@gmail.com
Bibliography
ALLEN, Joseph R., ed., trans. Sea of Dreams: The Selected Writings of Gu Cheng. New York:
New Directions Publishing Corporation, 2005.
1 This may be attributed to the fact that the translation by Chu Chiyu and Seán Golden was actually done
in consultation with the poet himself. See Chu and Golden, notes on translators.
2 Allen XIII.
3 Raffel 13, 37, 167, 185.
4 Hans. J.Vermeer, “Skopos and Commission in Translational Action,” Introducing Translation Studies,
trans. Andrew Chesterman (London, New York: Routledge, 2001) 234-237.
5 Raffel 166-167.
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