Buyu, the Chinese Poetry Game
Poetry cannot be translated from one language to another without
losing or distorting some essential aspect of meaning. This is
especially true when the languages, and also the complex web of
associations and rhythms and traditions, are as far apart as Chinese
and English.
Not!
The Buyu game is about translating poetry from Chinese to
English. Each of the following poems comes with all the meanings
of every ideogram, and it is up to you—the translator—to
produce beautiful English poetry. (See also John Searle's 'Chinese Room'.)
I've asked friends to translate some of these poems, and
I've collected some of their wide range of alternative readings.
These poems are all taken from a collection called 300 Tang
Poems. The Tang period, 618–906 AD, is the golden age
of Chinese poetry. In the eighteenth century an anonymous scholar, who
signed himself 'the retiring scholar of the fragrant pool', collected
300 representative poems from 77 of the greatest Tang poets. There are
many versions available online, e.g.
chinapage.com,
chinese-tools.com.
The poems, and our translations
Some of the poems are in this single file
[pdf].
- Bai xin yue with translations (RSJC, FJC, TP, TP, MAW, MAW, IW)
- Song cui jiu with translations (DD, IW, DJW)
- Song xiong with translation (DJW)
- Xiang si with translation (DJW)
- Xun yin zhe bu yu with translation (TP, JV, CO, MJH, PBG)
- Ye si with translations (DD, SD, KH, CH, DH, IW, DJW)
- Ye su shan si with translations (TP, DJW, CMW, IW, LJW)
- You zi yin with translations (DJW, S&A, MAW, CMW)
- Yu jie yuan with translation (CMW, MAW, TP, DJW, IW)
- Za shi with translations (DJW, MAW, CMW, IW)
- Zhu li guan with translations (S&A, LJW, MAW, DJW, IW)
- Song meng hao ran with translations (DJW, MAW, MAW, LJW, IW)
- Zi ye si she ge dong ge with translations (DJW, PSM, RN, DN)
- Deng guan qiao lou
- Chun si with translations (DJW, IW, CMW, MAW)
- Deng you zhou tai ge with translations (DJW, CO, BK, MJH, PBG, JV)
- Zhong nan wang yu xue with translations (DJW, IW, CMW, SD, DD)
- Su jian de jiang (MAW, DJW, IW, LJW, CMW)
- Chun xiao (DJW, LJW, CMW, IW)
- Yuan qing (LJW, DJW, CMW, IW, MAW)
- Ba zhen tu
- Song ling che
- Dan qin
- Song shang ren
- Qiu ye ji qiu yuan wai
How Chinese Works
Here are some absurdly simplistic things to remember when you're
translating.
- Chinese verbs aren't inflected to indicate tense
- Chinese verbs aren't inflected to indicate person
- Chinese doesn't distinguish between adjectives, verbs and
prepositions in the same way that English does
- Often, several ideograms go to make up a single concept. To a
native speaker these would be as natural as English compounds like
'babysitting' (what do you sit the baby on?)
Note on viewing Chinese in your web browser
If these poems come out full of funny squares or question marks instead of Chinese
characters, you need to install Chinese fonts.
-
For Windows XP: From the Control Panel, open Regional Options. Under the Languages
tab, choose 'Install files for East Asian languages'. You may be prompted
for your Windows install disk.
-
For other systems: you're on your own. You may find these free
Chinese fonts helpful.
-
If you can't be bothered with all this, just download a single file
which contains all the poems
[pdf]