浅谈庞德翻译的长干行

Comments on the Translation of Chang Gan Xing

The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter is translated by Ezra Pound and a free translation from Li Bai’s poem Chang Gan Xing. The poem depicts the human experience of sorrow at separation and human experience of love. In Pound’s translation, we can find either some good aspects or some bad aspects.

Firstly, from the good aspects we can find the following characteristics. Pound was the leader of the imagists and endorsed three famous principles: direct treatment, economy of expression and rhythm. There are no rare words in the translation. In the ancient English poems, there are “thee”, “thou” and “thy”. But in Pound’s poem, he tried to use “you” which is modern and easy to understand. Besides he uses “my lord” which refers to the woman’s husband in the translation. It reflects better the relationship between the wife and the husband in the ancient China. “They hurt me. I grow older.” This sentence describes directly the young woman’s pain and sadness caused by the husband’s absence.

For lack of the knowledge of the Chinese ancient cultures, Pound made many mistakes. “You came by on bamboo stilts,

playing horse”. In the original poem, “竹马”is a stick of bamboo. Children ride on the bamboo just like riding on the horse. “Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.” In Li Bai’s poem, it means that the two persons are young and their hearts are pure. They don’t understand what is “dislike” and “suspicion”. They just regarded each other as best friends. Pound totally mistook this sentence: And you have been gone five months. Actually, it means that in May the water level of the Yangtze River has risen and the boats cannot go through it. So the woman is very worried about her husband. “If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang”, this sentence is also wrong. In the original poem, it means that the woman’s husband has left several months and the woman is hurry to know the information of her husband, so the woman wants to know when her husband comes back. Here “早晚” means when and “三巴” means a place where in Sicuan province. “F orever and forever and forever. Why should I climb the look out? ” In this sentence there are two Chinese allusions, but Pound doesn’t translate them.