Hundred Poems of Wang Wei

Author: Wang Baotong Yu Ran
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-07-01
Features: In poetry translation, I advocate translating poetry with poetry, capturing the original poem's artistic conception and poetic essence. When it comes to translating Wang Wei's poems into English, I translating his Zen essence, his "poetry within painting," and his unique musical beauty. The original poem's rhythm should be vivid, and the translated poem should also have a clear rhythm. The original poem's rich sound patterns should be preserved in the translation. If one ignores these characteristics of Wang Wei's poems while translating them, the result will not truly be Wang Wei. How these principles are applied in this book is left for the readers to judge. At the end of the main text, I have included an essay on Chinese poetry translation into English that I published in 1993. The bibliography that follows includes other articles of mine on this topic, all of which are available for the readers' reference.