Re: Translation exercise: Li Bai's "Drinking alone under the moon"

Quoting J Y S Czhang <czhang23@...>:

> In a message dated 08/25/2002 12.06.40 PM, trwier@UCHICAGO.EDU writes:
>
> >One of my favorite poems by Li Bai is the following, which
> >I've decided to use to build my Phaleran vocabulary and
> >to develop a sense of how Phaleran poetics is fashioned.
> <SNiP>
>
>     ::duly impressed:: Niceness of choice...
It's nice to have one's sense of esthetics reaffirmed
every once in a while. :)

> >Unfortunately, I broke the cardinal rule of translating:
> >translating from a translation.
>
>     Who did _that_ translation, 0_o?  Ol' Ezra Pound? or wiley Arthur
> Waley? or ... IMHO it looks to be a tiny bit "over-translated"
> and somewhat "clunky" (but, thankfully, not "kludgy") by Chinese
> poetic aesthetics.
There are two translators:  Bruce M. Wilson, at St. Mary's College
in Maryland, and Zhang Ting-chen at the University of Shanghai.
I'm looking for some other translations, too.  In the meantime,
I'll comfort myself with the copy of Thomas Merton's translation
of Zhuangzi that I'm going to order.

 =========================================================================
Thomas Wier
Dept. of Linguistics  "Nihil magis praestandum est quam ne pecorum ritu
University of Chicago sequamur antecedentium gregem, pergentes non qua
1010 E. 59th Street   eundum est, sed qua itur." -- Seneca
Chicago, IL 60637