Vivian Yuxin Wen

on translating Shu Ting

I used to be daunted by the impossible task of being “absolutely faithful” in translation but have since learned to enjoy the process as a creative endeavor while maintaining the utmost respect for the poet and the original work. In "O Motherland, My Dear Motherland," what I tried to preserve was not the word-for-word translation, but the overall sentiment: we are enraptured by our country’s glorious moments, and we become deeply disappointed when she stops trying for herself.

The first two lines in the original poem rhyme, with a variation in inflection that is unique to Chinese lyricism. Having recognized that it is very difficult to preserve such end rhyme without compromising syntactic clarity in English, I decided to utilize internal rhyme (“battered,” “haggard”), and let the poem sing through alliteration and assonance (“wan,” “waterwheel,” “weaving”). These drawn-out sounds also aptly capture the weariness of the old waterwheel with an almost onomatopoeia, a pleasant surprise that even the original Chinese could not deliver. Such an aspect of the poem is a result of my process: I read the lines aloud one time after another to let the sounds come to me and guide me, and then, amazingly, the meanings soon followed.

In the poem, the imagery least accessible to English speakers is perhaps Feitian, which refers to the flying female spirits painted on the walls of Mogaoku in Dunhuang (widely known as “Thousand Buddha Grottoes”). I initially translated the imagery into apsaras — defined by the Oxford Dictionary as female spirits in Hindu and Buddhist culture. Yet I soon realized how the seemingly accessible rendering could be misleading. Apsaras are strongly associated with Indian Buddhism. Feitian evokes the many treasured Chinese relics in Dunhuang that have been snatched by other civilizations and are, still, unreturned. This case presents a stricter version of “faithfulness” in translation — an impossible yet necessary task.

Interestingly, the word choice in the original poem was no less difficult; Shu Ting’s work was initially denied publishing on the basis of superfluous imagery and obscurity. The “waterwheel” we see here was an edit from “windmill” in an effort to make it more relatable to the average Chinese man. Another suggestion was made to change “weaving [the song]” to “singing [the song]” (“how could one weave a song?”), but Shu Ting remained firm in her choice. The poem was finally published in the official poetry journal, Shi Kan, and became widely applauded for the human, fervent, and discerning expression of “patriotism.”