The Poet as Translator

Abstract

Verse translation is thriving in China today. A publishing house in Hunan has launched a whole series of foreign poetical works in Chinese translation ranging from Sanskrit Vedas to Japanese haiku and is, from all reports, doing brisk business on them. The literary journals, too, are giving generous space to poetry from abroad. A rough check of some of the Beijing-based magazines published in the last 6 months or so finds the following names among the poets translated: Margaret Atwood, Baudelaire, Robert Bly, Burns, Giosuè Carducci, T. S. Eliot, Kenneth Koch, Robert Frost, Hugh MacDiarmid, Sorley Maclean, Mallarmé, Yunna Moritz, Edwin Muir, Bulat Okudzhava, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Valéry, Yuri Voronov, William Carlos Williams, etc.

The author is indebted to several friends for helping to track down and elucidate the Spanish and Russian originals of some of the passages cited. Particular thanks are due to Professor Liu Zongci, Mr. Jiang Zhifang and Mr. Zhou Qiang.