Yu Guangzhong's "Winter Solstice" (余光中的『冬至』)

It's Winter Solstice today. We had an early release of all our staff. But it was not only a release of our staff. It was also my own release. I could comb through the poems of Yu Guangzhong freely again to find something to match the festive sentiment, and go a little way toward meeting a request by one of my fellow bloggers. I found one. It's called Winster Solstice. The poem and the translation follows.

          冬至                                                  Winter Solstice

想了很久都不能决定              Thought a long while but couldn't decide

最別致的一張聖誕卡               How to trim for you

應怎樣來為你剪裁                   A beautiful Christmas card

直到冬至那一天，我說           Until the day of Winter Solstice, I said

對了，便沿著浪花的花邊       Yes, then cut out the spacious seaview of Saichi Bay

剪大西子灣空曠的海景         along the foamy edges of the waves

正面，是今年最短的一日        Yes,  it's the shortest day of the year 

---在壯麗的下端                       ---at the lower end of grandeur

紅艶艶印著一枚夕陽                the red red sunset in print 

反面，是今年最長的一夜        No, it's the longest night of the year

---在寂寞的上端                       --at the upper end of loneliness 

銀晃晃貼著一籤冷月                the silvery silvery chilly moon stuck

而橫在壯麗和寂寞的中間       midway atride grandeur and loneliness.

我的思念是燒煉的晚霞           My thoughts homed in on the burnished dusk

這一切，幾何學最妙的設計   All this, the most subtle design of geometry

天文學最精確的安排               the most precise arrangement of astronomy

直到平安夜的前四天               Was not found until

頓然才發現，卻已經               four days afore Christmas Eve, but oh,

唉，來不及郵寄給你了           it's far too late to be posted to you.

                                                                                           (25.12. 1988)

As stated, this is a creation by the poet on Christmas day of 1988. It's written in an almost colloquial style but not entirely. We can find a whole series of balances and equivalences. But the balance serves only to set into relief the contrasts, the movement of oppositions: postive/negative, sun/moon, day/night, long/short, geometry/astronomy, early/late, Eastern festival/Western festival. The images range from those related to space to those related to time. The language range from the colloquial to the more formal, from prose to prosy poetry.

Have a happy family union whether according to Chinese customs or as a pre-Christmas family reunion!

The Difficulties of Translation

Since I have been doing quite a lot of translation of poems from Spanish or French into English and Chinese and from Chinese into English but have simply relied upon my own instincts, I often have doubts about whether my principles are right. I try my best to make my translations simple, brief and as far as possible, to keep to the original word order to enable the reader to have a sense in which the thought of the poet originally occurred. But sometimes, that may not always be possible because different languages may have very different type of permissible sentence structure with regard to where to place the subject, the object, the verbs, the adjectives and adverbs or the corresponding adjectival or abverbial phrases and certain images and symbols may have meaning in one culture which in another cultural context may have some very different connotations or even become meaningless. Sometimes it is necessary to cut out certain words which may be impliedly understood and sometimes, it may be necessary to add a subject or other adjective to make the translated version comprehensible at all. On rare occasions, it may even be necessary to introduce emotionally or meaning-wise equivalent images in the translated language quite different from that actually used in the original language. So notwithstanding my best efforts, I am always skeptical of the appropriateness of my own translations. 

Some fellow bloggers think my translation good and others may not agree. When I saw Xu Zhimo's translation of William Blake's poem "Tiger" and when I compare his version to my more literal translation, the problem of "translation" as against "re-writing" a poem in the translated language became even more stark. Which approach is "right" and which "wrong"? Even if there is no question of which is right and which is wrong, then there is still the question of which translation is "better" or may correspond more to the original poem in sense or sentiments. If there really is something called a "better" translation", what are the criteria to be used in determining what constitutes the "best" translation and what criteria are properly applicable to enable us to determine which of a number of translation is better than the others?  I turn to some experts in translation in the past to get some inkling.

Earlier in my Chinese book odyssey to both sides of the harbour, I bought a number of books on translation theory and practice. So tonight, I read my first one: "Western Theories of Translation" edited by 陳德鴻 (Chan) and 張南峰  (Cheung) by the City U of HK Press (2000, 2006).

According to Chan & Cheung, translation into Chinese has a history of more than 2000 years but such theories tended in the past to be confined to the impressions of translators after they have done certain translation and therefore were quite unsystemmatic. Only in the last 20 years has there been any professional scholarship on the problems of translation. To them, such theories have tended to emphasize setting up criteria for the practice of translation but like traditional theories of translation, they are dominated by the idea of "the supremacy of the original text" ( 原文至上) eg. theories like " 5 types of non-translatability" ( 五不翻) " fidelity, clarity and elegance" (信達雅) ," formal resemblance, resemblance in spirit and equivalence" (形似，神似，等值).

The authors think that the introduction of western translation theory did not start until the 1980's but that their scope was limited by the mainstream perspective of the Chinese translators. There are a number of such theories which may roughly be classified into those emphasizing language, linguistics, translation studies, deconstructionism, feminism and post-colonialism. But translated translation studies are confined to those by J. C. Catford, Eugune A Nida and Wolfram Wilss who all emphasize language and the importance of equivalence, rather similar to the views of mainstream Chinese translation theory. Thus recent works of those opposed to such an approach tend to be largely ignored.

The book shows samples of the translation theories from a fairly large number of writers from all ages and from all schools of translation theory most of whom are completely new to me. From the traditional language translation school they got John Dryden, Alexander Tytler. George Steiner and Friedrich Schleiermacher are semiologists. There is also Peter Newmark of a linguistic bent. All of such authors emphasize the importance of fidelity. Mary Snell-Hornby, however puts more emphasis on the relationship between translation and culture and is opposed to the theory of equivalence.

The authors also introduce another 13 other authors who are all opposed to the "fidelity" theory. Thus Jacques Derrida, Paul de Man and Lawrence Venuti, following Walter Benjamin's lead, advocate abolishing the distinction between author and translator, original text and the translated text. Han J Vermeer and Chistine Nord think that the crucial factor is the purpose of the translation. Itamar Even-Zohar, James Hlmes, Gideon Toury, José Lambert, Susan Bassnett think that the principal task of translation theory is to describe, understand and to predict translation and not to lay down criteria as to what is the best type of translation.

The authors regret that they have not been able to include in their work those writings of the latest influential theorists like Sherry Simon, Tejaswini Niranjana and Umberto Eco. I have lots to read about in the coming weeks. I hope to be able to introduce the ideas of some of the theorists in my blog when I have more time. For the time being, this blog shall serve as my introduction of the authors' introduction and as hints of some of blogs to come!

Celebration of the Body

This Sunday is rather unusual. I did not read anything except a number of menus. The menus were those of a restaurant recommended to me by a friend. It was a restaurant with a fairly long history. It goes by the name of Cova. It is claimed that it was first established in 1817, in Milan. According to a booklet I got, Cova was originally opened at the corner of the Piazza della Scala, the famous Italian opera house, for pastries and cappucino before or after the show. It has already established a presence in Hong Kong in the form of various "Pasticceria-Confetteria Boutiques" in Prince's Building, Pacific Place, Lee Gardens, World Trade Centre, Devon House, Ocean Centre, Festival Walk, New Town Plaza and Centro-Alexandra House. They have now also associated "Caffe-Ristorantes"  next to some of their boutiques (little shops). .

I went to the one in Alexandra House. Though I work in the building just five minutes away, I have never been to this restaurant. When I wanted some good European food, I usually went  to Jimmy's Kitchen or for Itailian food, to Va Beni in Lan Kwai Fong. Perhaps the cakes and patisserie of Cova can be made en masse but I don't think the food at the restaurants can be done similarly. I do not know if the chefs are equally good in all the restaurants carrying that name and I have no idea if it runs as a franchise and if so, how good is its quality control. I suppose that because of its location, the chef in Central should not be too bad. I did not order anything fancy. I just had their special lunch for Sunday. 

The cafe restaurant was rather small, not more than a dozen tables, all arranged close to the plate glass railing at the northern side of the 2nd floor opposite to the Prince's Building.  Because it was not more than 30 feet from the side of the buiilding, one can enjoy the natural sunlight streaming in through the glass wall outside. The decor was simple: white linen instead of the red and white or green and white checkers that you find in some traditional Italian restaurants. To make the straight lines and featureless glass and steel a little more human, they had two waiter counters in dark oak wood with corrugated lines over which were placed some flowers. The monotony of the rows of tables was broken only by a row of lamps next to the glass railing with rectangular metal aluminium stands with fairly geometrically circular lamp shades. To reduce the feeling of mechanical coldness, the lamp shades were in ivory fabric of a rough texture. It was comfortable and quiet. From my seat, I could see two Christmas trees, one big, one small looking aligned in a row as if they had been specially placed there for asymmetry and the frames of the window in the middle divided the surface of the glass into a number of bigger or smaller rectangles from where I was sitting so that it looked like some of those abstract paintings of Paul Klee or those of Mondrian but with colourful images appearing enclosed within or in front of such rectangles when  in fact, it's just an accidental effect. The big one was on the floor below about maybe 15 feet away and the small one was outside the entrance to the Prince's building diagonally opposite! But accidental or not, the alignment of the big and small Christmas trees in a row with its decorations was quite pleasant.I like the way a silver paper band  glittered with the movement of the winter breeze in the sunlight on top of that little Christmas tree outside the tiny entrance of Princes Building. It was really beautiful. 

Suddenly I got the urge to write something. I asked the waiter for some paper and a pen. After consulting the captain, they gave me some tiny menus with a fairly large space but they were far too small, measuring maybe 4 inches by 3.  So I told the waiter I needed something bigger. He went back and actually brought me something rather more suitable for writing. It was the back of a foolscap paper in which they ordered various labels, cards, ribbons, wrapping paper, bags etc used by the restaurant ie. their stationery purchase list. I saw a beautifully prepared Christmas menu, in the form of a booklet with a cloth-like textured thick cover with words printed in thick carved gold on its cover. It was really beautiful. I asked if I could take it because I wanted to write something about the experience. The captain said I could. I then asked if I could take the menu for the special lunch that I ordered to save me writing out all those Italian words whose meanings I could only guess using my knowledge of French and Spanish. But he said that he did not have sufficient so he could not let me have it. I said it was OK. It's not as if I must have it. Really nice people. I asked the pretty waitress how long they had been there. She said they had moved there from Chater House for three years already. I had been to their shop at Prince's Building before but I never knew they had a cafe-restaurant in Alexandra House.

For their Special Lunch, I had a choice of Antipasto All'italiana( Italian pre-meal pastry /Zuppa del Giorno (soup of the day) which is pea soup. The first plate was Aragosta (lobster) with two choices: Spaghetti All'aragosta Pourdno (?)Basilo Fasco (Spaghetti with lobster and rich base ) or Linguini with cherry tomato salsa (sauce)  and basil or alternatively Risotto con Arogosta Champagn Arborir (countryside tree?) risotto (or Italian open fire cooked rice with country style lobster with cherry tomato sauce or Arrossi di Carne, (or roast meat) in spiced butter sauce or Pesce Forces del Sapor Mediterranean ( Halibut with Meditarranean flavor) and for dessert, I had a choice of Torta (cake), Gelato (Icecream) or Caffe/Tea. I had the linguini and halibut. I did not want the soup because pea soup tastes rather flat nor did I want the icecream (too fat) or coffee because I already had one in the morning. The first and second dishes were good but not particularly so. I like the linguini though, because it was cooked not too soft and not too raw. There was a chewiness to the pasta which I had seldom experienced but the sauce was a little bit too light for my taste and the baked cheese was rolled into a lump. The halibut was not the freshest but it was alright. There was at least some springiness to the flesh. Again the taste was very light but I liked the butter sauce . Smelt really good. But I had to put in lots of ground black pepper. And they could certainly have the food a bit warmer. But the service was good. For the starter, I was offered some bread, crackers, cheesticks. I like the basil bread and the cheesesticks best. The cheesticks were really fluffy and crunchy at the same time and you can feel the smell and taste of the cheese. I told the waiter if I could have more. Originally, I had four. He brought me another four. In fact, I liked it so much that when I left, I bought another 200 grams for $65.00. I like the dessert best. I was a Neapolitan cake: a three layer pastry with strawberry and cream and creamy vanilla sauce. Really delicious. The pastry is good, very fluffy. The portion was not big but it was already too big for me. The meal was not cheap. Nor was it expensive. I felt full even when I was swimming later. The bill including tips came to $320 and I got a glass of sweet red sparkling house wine. I had sparkling white wine before like Champagne. But it was the first time that I had a sparkling red wine. It tasted rather sweet. I tipped more because of the service. It was a very pleasant and leisurely lunch.

After the lunch, I did some grocery and then went on a hike as the weather was excellent. I took the MTR to Shaukiwan and then took a minibus to Big Wave Bay and from there I climbed a couple of hundred steps to the top of the Jardine Lookout. It gave a magnficent view of the Bay and the sea beyond. There were some waves. From the outermost to the innermost, I could see a total of 5 wave heads, each higher than the previous with a distance of some 10 to 15 feet between each. No wonder there were more than 20 surfers. I like the colour of the sea with the sunlight which flickered upon the water like liquid gold. I'm so pleased I only made one stop along the way up and just for enjoying the spectauclar view of the beautiful sea, the clear blue sky and the distant islands and not out of need. The bones and muscles still seem serviceable! I really don't know how long they would stay that way!

I had never walked this route from the Big Wave Bay end. I could go to Quarry Bay or Chai Wan but I was lucky. Ahead of me were two ladies with 5 poodles. I asked which one of them which would be the shortest route because I did not want to tire myself too much as I was expecting to swim later in the evening. They told me they were going to Siu Sai Wan. I never took this route before. So they told me to follow them. I did. It was really short. The whole journey took only about 50 minutes. I could go down Chai Wan of course. If I did, they told me it would probably be about 10 minutes or so longer. But I had already taken that route before, but starting from Chai Wan end, near Cape Collinson. So I tried out this new route. It was quite an easy walk. I started at about 4.30 p.m. and by 6 p.m. I was already home by taking the express route 788 bus which the ladies told me about. It runs along the Eastern Corridor. There were not very many people taking the trek route. For the whole journey, I did not see more than 20 people, both ways! It was a very pleasant walk with a magnficent view of the sea. It was not very strenuous. Really worth doing.  Now I know what to do when I want another short hike. 

In the evening, I went swimming again. I left the house at about 8.20 p.m., arrived at the Morrison Hill Pools around 8.35 p.m. and swam until 9.45 p.m. It was even better than last week because there were even fewer people at the pool. You don't have to swim a few strokes and then stop or swerve to avoid bumping into other's head or other parts of their bodies especially those of ladies when it could be very troublesome if the other party is unreasonable. It was a really good swim. This time I did 22 laps, two more than last week. Like the past week, all my nose slime disappeared without a trace and breathing was such a delight again. After the swim and the hot shower, I could walk with a spring in my steps. It feels really good to be doing exercises. Today is a day I devoted all my time to my body: first the meal and then the hike and finally the swim. No reading at all! And it's good, for the body any way. A day of celebration of the body! According to Christian theology, the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit!

Saturday Morning Lessons

Though a bit chilly, it's a really beautiful Saturday morning. Time for some fun again. This week I'm going to be a little more serious than usual. I shall deal with a subject which some regard as the most important task that parents can have. It's education. So the lesson starts.

One day in a primary class, a teacher brought in a bag full fruit.

"Now class, I'm going to reach my hand into this bag. I'll give you a description of a fruit. You'll then tell me what fruit I'm talking about. Okay? Now for the first one. It's round, plump and red."

Jonnhy raised up his hand high. The teacher knowing him, wisely ignored him and picked Deborah, who promptly answered: "An apple."

The teacher replied, "No, Deborah. It's a beet. But I like your thinking. Now for the second. It's soft, fuzzy and colored red and brownish."

Johnny is hopping up and down in his seat trying to get the teacher to call his name. She skips him again and calls on Billy.

"Is it a peach?" Billy asks.

"No, Billy, I'm afraid it's a potato. But I like you thinking."

She starts again, "Now here's another. It is long, yellow and fairly hard."

By now Johnny is about to explode as he frantically waves his hand. The teacher skips him again and calls on Sally.

"A banana!" she says.

"No", " the teacher replies, "It's a squash, but I like your thinking."

Johnny is kind of irritated by now.  So he speaks up loudly, "Hey, I've got one for you Miss Smith. Let me put my hand in my pocket. Okay, I've got it. It's round, hard and it's got a head on it."

"Johnny!, "she cries. ""That's disgusting!"

"Nope," answers Johnny, "It's a quarter, but I like your thinking."

Xu Zhomo's "The Cuckoo" 除志摩的『杜鵑』

The Cuckoo is a very special bird for two reasons. It is quite common. It's unique sound of its song resembles very closely certain human words. The name "cuckoo"  is intended as an omnomatopeia of the characteristic sound of the way it sings. In the Chinese version of the poem, Xu uses a very familiar Chinese expression indicating intimacy between the speaker and the bird "哥哥" which both resembles the sound its song and the Chinese character meaning "brethern.". The poet kinesthetically transforms it sound into images: from the song of the bird at night, his mind springs to the shades of summer and then moving upwards, reaching even ot the skies and then from the sky to the moon and then back to earth with its fluttering moths around a source of light, the moon, surrounded by the shimmering stars and from the sky back to the sea with its twinkling lamps of the fishing boats close to the shore. Then his mind wanders to another image, the peasants rising up in the morning with a shock that a wild night of loving making has come to an end! From the sound of the cuckoo bird, he recalls the traditional Chinese image of 杜鵑啼血 or the cuckoo bird coughing blood and from that his mind immediately thinks of the blood dyeing in red the blades of grass in that morning that the peasant wakes up in the morning. It's a case of one association leading to the next until we reach the end of the poem after leaping imaginatively through 6 or 7 images, one following by emotional association with another.

 

               杜鵑                                                      The  Cuckoo

杜鵑，多情的鳥他終宵唱：     The amorous cuckoo is singing all night long:

在夏蔭深處，仰望着流雲     In the depths of summer's shade, gazing at passing clouds

飛蛾似圍繞月亮的明燈  Circling the bright lamp of the gleaming moon like fluterring moths

星光疏散如海濱的漁火 Starlights strewn like fishermen's lamps around the shore,

甜美的夜在露湛裹休憩 The sweet night is resting in dewdrops

他唱，他唱一聲「割麥插禾，」--He's singing, he's singing "Harvest the wheat, plant the padi--

農天們在天放曉時驚起    Peasants rising in shock at the break of dawn.

多情的鵑鳥他終宵聲訴 ，The amorous  cuckoo is singing all night long,

是怨，是慕，他心頭滿是愛  His regrets, his adoration, his heart filled with love,

滿是苦化我纏綿的新歌 ，Full of  new songs of entwining suffering,

柔情在靜夜的懷中顫動  ；Trembling tenderness in the bosom of the peaceful night;

他唱 ，口滴着鮮血，斑斑的，He's singing, blood dripping from his mouth, in spots,

染紅露盈盈的草尖，晨光，Dyeing red the tips of grass heavy with dew, the morning light,

輕搖着園林的迷夢；他叫，Gently rocking the garden's enchanted dreams; he's crying,

他叫，他叫一聲「我愛哥哥！」He's crying, he is crying , " I love cuckoos".