Song Shi Jing Hua Lu Translation and Notes

Author: Cai Yijiang
Publisher:
Publish Date: 1999-12-01
Features: This book is aimed at beginners and is a popular reading material. Since there is already a translation, the notes are kept concise. For some allusions and historical events, if translating the original text would be too lengthy, only the gist is conveyed. The original book includes an auto-biography by Shi Yuelao, whose main idea is that poetry is like music and must "harmonize the eight tones," not have "earth and wood without silk, bamboo, gold, and iron." This idea has already been mentioned, so the biography has been omitted. The original author's brief introduction in the book is too simple, so it has been rewritten with necessary supplements to make it appropriately detailed. The original book has annotations with Shi Yuelao's circle markings, but readers should not be limited by his preferences when appreciating the poems. These markings have been removed. However, Shi Yuelao's original comments are preserved as the first note for each poem, with additional explanations when necessary. The variations and errors in the original poems are only briefly mentioned in the notes, not listed one by one, to avoid excessive complexity.
Translating ancient poetry into modern language is extremely difficult; second, it is challenging because the vocabulary habits of ancient and modern languages differ. It is hard to convey the original meaning while also maintaining rhyme, let alone preserving the original poetic flavor. What we aim to do is simply to help beginners better understand and appreciate the original poems when reading them, not to replace the original work with translations.