As an often-helpless researcher of poets from centuries past, I used to envy those who translated contemporary poetry, for I thought that if they encountered any difficulties, they could always turn to the living author. However, when I translated Xiao Hai’s Song of Shadows, I preferred to waive this privilege. I came to understand translation as the closest form of reading, a process of understanding and re-creation—like playing a piece of music. First, the musician must read the composer’s score correctly, and then she can interpret it in her own style.

The original’s musicality is the greatest loss in translation. Modern poetry no longer emphasizes rhyme scheme, but its inner music still breathes a poet’s unique spirit. Though I try to preserve this quality in my translations, I can’t replicate what I hear in the original. The impossibility of doing so lies in the fundamental linguistic differences between Chinese and English; each language, as well as each poet, has certain sounds and rhythms to convey particular moods. But the issue also owes to the fact that musicality is subjective, beyond reason and logic. This problem is frustrating to a translator, but it is also where the creative quality of translating comes into play. More.

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