Dance: A Recent Translation

"The performers are like the live plastic material in motion, with their physical movements directly translating the concepts of nuclear physics..."

I recently had a chance to translate some Taiwanese arts criticism. After doing so much history, it was refreshing to be asking all these big questions, and to have such stylish, colorful language in play

The Terrible Message of Environmental Consciousness of Nuclear Energy:
“1/2 Life” by the BodyCartography Project. (.Artco, April 2010. )

Text and Photos by Li Chia-ling

Combining video, installation, sculpture, theater, dance, music and scientific research, the BodyCartography Project can be traced back to the first work presented by video artist Olive Bieringa in San Francisco, in 1997. Two years later, dancer Otto Ramstad joined to become co-director. Now 13 years old, the BodyCartography Project is not so much an artistic group as it is a series of creative designs. In the past 8 years, many different new works have launched under the umbrella of the BodyCartography Project, each a collaboration with a different artist. Presently the group is on an all-American tour presenting its new work for 2010, 1/2 Life, which seeks to display the body’s existence among scientific research, data, and a controlled world. Half Life begins on the fringes of the Pacific Ocean, and along a path directed through the nuclear superpower of America, Japanese survivors of the atomic bomb, and the nuclear-free zone of New Zealand to bring forward humanity’s use of nuclear energy as an environmental topic.

Of History Of Nuclear Energy: Environmental Consciousness
The specialized term “half life” from radioactive physics originally refers to the course of nuclear reactions within the atom. The artists of the BodyCartography Project have appropriated it as the title of their new work. Half Life creates the artistic relationship between nuclear physics and the physical movement of the body, thus advancing the persistent inquiry into nuclear themes. This environmental concern is the pride of Bieringa’s mother culture – New Zealand is a nuclear-free zone. The 1/2 Life of 2002 was still a concept only just thought up from out of the spirit of some earlier scenes from dance/video works by the BodyCartography Project. Until, that is, a 2007 trip to Japan’s Kyoto Arts Center to do a three-month residency, in collaboration with dancers on the ground in Japan. Then they lanched 1/2 Life in its concrete form. The show conveys the tight connection between the invention of nuclear energy and the world of humankind in a stage of early modern history. Besides this research, the work is also a collaboration with physicist Bryce Beverlin II to get through to the scientific content of nuclear physics. Bieringa and Ramstad take this real-world data and materials and evolve it into movements for the body of the performer. Whether ensemble or solo performances, all scenes of 1/2 Life feature a shadow of the body, twisted by slowness or intensity. With three full years of research and planning to it, slow or intense and twisted certainly was a slow process of creation. This also reflects the view of American artist Hal Foster that “artists are like ethnographers.” Artists since the 1980s have used the language of art to deal with topics in society, culture, politics, education, and economics. This is very different from the belief of modern artists that “art is for art’s sake.” This direction of artistic creation makes the things that art deals with not limited by issues of formal materials; the content and trends within topics of investigative and observational research also become important processes for molding artistic expression.

Of Bodily Movement: The Direct Translation of Science

The experimental theater PerformanceSpace 122 was the location for the premiere of the BodyCartography Project’s new work 1/2 Life. The theater’s dark hall is made to bear an important, contemporary experiment in the “totality of art” conveyed in the sixty minutes of 1/2 Life. This includes sculpture and installation by visual artist Emmett Ramstad, body-movement performances by dancers Olive Bieringa, Otto Ramstad and Kitamura Takemi, as well as musical accompaniment by composer and harpist Zeena Perkins. Out of a visual display of molded plastic materials emerges a contemporary artistic ceremony that symbolizes the links between nuclear energy and ecological systems in contemporary art. Artist Emmett Ramstad’s use of so much plastic material applies a random, organic construction to put a ceiling over the experimental drama. Bieringa calls this a sea of plastic, meant to convey the nature of lines of invisible radiation and the irresolvable reality of plastic. The performers slowly come onstage, faces expressionless, bodies costumed in plastic. By turns they slow and then intense, moving their bodies in dance they enter the dark, box-like space of the theater. The performing ensemble usually hides their bodies behind thin wooden panels, as if using them as protective quarters. They move them constantly, but then in an instant the curved wooden panels become still and motionless, forming a scene of abstract “live sculpture.” At times the assisting performers holding the thin wooden panels sway them to create a live, natural sound. These “shadow movers” resemble the assistants to Japanese “kuroko” performers, who stand behind them, dressed in black. But they also symbolize the “critical mass” for chain reactions in nuclear physics, as well as the “group mind.” The performers are like the live plastic material in motion, with their physical movements directly translating the concepts of nuclear physics, including matter, energy, radiation, and resonance effects; their bodies here symbolize matter. In the last scene of the performance, a space constructed of wood and canvas slowly slides onto the stage. It looks like living quarters meant to hold shadows. The essence of the architectural elements is derived from Japanese metropolitan temporary canvas housing erected by vagrants. The performers, in this four-sided room, moving back and forth among the pleasing natural shadows cast on them, finally strip off all their clothes to present the movements of washing their bodies clean, concluding the performance of 1/2 Life.
The term “cross-disciplinary” which has spurred a flood of discussion for some time would seem appropriate to talk about the work 1/2 Life, which combines such multiple layers and forms of art as theater installation, body movements by the performers, and natural sound accompaniment. But to the BodyCartography Project, using the term “cross-disciplinary” to describe the work is not as good as speaking of their efforts to engage in “transdisciplinary” concepts. This is because “cross-disciplinary” refers to a dialogue between disciplines, while the Latin root “trans” in “transdisciplinary” has the meaning of “penetrating into,” “through,” which reflects the BodyCartography Project’s effort to completely unify different fields in one work. Many contemporary artists are using a “multiplicity” of art forms. These at once answer and also reflect the circumstances of the age we are facing. American art historian Meyer Schapiro has said, “Every change in ideology brings in a new style or a new art — every change in the content of art is produced by a specific social change, which is material in origin.” Perhaps Schapiro’s comment explains 1/2 Life with the concept of “transdisciplinary:” a various and multiple contemporary artistic vocabulary.

Interview with Olive Bieringa and Otto Ramstad. Interview edits and photography by Li Chia-ling.

Q: Is "Body Cartography Project" the name of a group? Or a common collaborative artistic project?

Bieringa: "Body Cartography Project" began in 1997 and 1998. About eleven years ago, it really began to be a collective project, a collective process. Beginning from 2001 and 2002, Ramstad and I collaborated on this project, and we worked within the project model. We collaborated with different kinds of artists, but we rarely presented collective work. In that area, we adopted what was perhaps a more traditional model in which two artists collaborate. But sometimes we'd also see some projects move forward with the support of different artists.

Q: I certainly don't think this is a traditional model. Presently when artists form themselves into artistic groups, most of the time they work together with similar artists. What's of interest here is that you and Ramstad were always project guides collaborating with different artists. Which is to say, each work project presents different forms of art.

Bieringa: Yes, the possibility for different media; it depends on the needs of each project.

Ramstad: In selecting diferent people to work with us, we change the model of "observation."

Bieringa: The "1/2 Life" project, for example. We worked together with scientists, visual artists, composers, other performers, and lighting designers.

Q: Speaking of collaboration with scientists, for several years now there has been discussion of the relationship between art and science, but mostly coming at it from the angle of engineering and technology. Speak just a bit on your experience collaborating with scientists to put on "1/2 Life."

Bieringa: Collaborating with scientists on this project was particularly productive; you could say that it made this project clearer and more specific in certain dimensions. The material here, with its violent history, is both dark and heavy, touching intermittently on death, disease, and pain. Thus, if you don't wish to manifest certain points of this violent history, it's because you don't wish to feel uncomfortable, or you think it is too gloomy. We most certainly do not wish to create works that are pleasant to see and think about. Rather, the feeling of discomfort in the work can really be useful for some people. Therefore we take one step back from real historical fact and approach it with a method of work located in science.

Q: A neutral position.

Bieringa: Speaking from a certain angle, the stimulating and abstract nature of real physics – this poetic language – supplies us with a space in which to create something, to maximize our benefit. The physicist that we collaborated with brought us to a university laboratory to show us the materials. Following, he came back with us to the workshop to present a lecture.

Ramstad: For example, he answered our practical questions about physics. Afterwards, we were able to do an extemporaneous performance based on nuclear physics. We were trying to penetrate and bring together two forms of engagement -- understanding and movement -- to deal with this information. We made many works to translate nuclear physics.

Bieringa: or to shadow it.

Q: Since this work sees bodily movement as an important part, for you two with your background in dance, what concept do you have of the body as an artistic material? What revelations can we find from "1/2 Life?"
Ramstad: Many works of dance are meant to supply us with representations of the body. We use our bodies to perform, and the audience in turn uses their bodies to observe. In between the two emerges a certain sympathetic response -- this is the relationship between us and the audience. To deal with this terrifying knowledge and to find a way to describe and represent it is extremely challenging and extremely arduous. This is also to place into the dance what we've just discussed, the collaboration with scientists, and in some sense to take the body as the movement of atoms and particles. I believe the work is an echo to the knowledge, one that comes back with more poetry. Also it offers people a specific explanation that they can clearly understand. You could say, we use the body as a vessel for transmitting knowledge. We create and perform the results of research. We connect this knowledge with people in a rapid and concrete fashion.

Q: "1/2 Life" combines the languages of many forms of art. What are your views on crossing disciplines?

Ramstad: All along we have been thinking of "transdisciplinary," which is not to place one thing onto another, but rather to think if as happening and evolving between each of the sciences. This is also to consider an interesting method of creation: you use the media you need, and then put it into its relation in the sequence of ideas. Moreover you find reciprocal and adaptive forms -- we try to create a complete experience.

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Dissertation Retreat Day 6

The Poet Yu Jian 于坚

Still not dead, as one of my best friends says on his blog. The last week has been devoted to dissertation work in the mornings until 3:30, and my progress has been...distinctly satisfactory, I think. I've almost finished all of the readings I want to do for this chapter of my dissertation, and today the mean time I have created a really substantive outline. Tomorrow I will devote myself to choosing the passages that I will use.

Meanwhile, translation work continues apace. Here's my version of a poem by Yu Jian called "Death Scene for a Butterfly."

A butterfly died in the rainy season     A butterfly
In broad daylight I still see her alone, run through by the New York subway
I still worry    She might hurry home in the dark
That death surrounded by blue flashes
A golden, fuzzy blob    Dance partner to the sunshine and blue sky
Kicked by lightning and rain into deep mud.
By then the leaves clung closely to the tree     Closing eyes
Star after star drowning in the dark black water
This death makes the summer vexed     Dark days
Will continue this way till September
A butterfly died in the rainy season
This is a bit of small news
In the clear morning I walk past that puddle.
See those beautiful fragments
My heart suddenly struck by the small, small death
I begin to remember, during last night’s sturm und drang
I was sitting just out of hearing
Missing a butterfly.


一只蝴蝶在雨季死去 一只蝴蝶

就在白天 我还见她独自在纽约地铁穿过

我还担心 她能否在天黑前赶回家中

那死亡被蓝色的闪电包围

金色茸毛的昆虫　阳光和蓝天的舞伴

被大雷雨踩进一滩泥浆

那时叶子们紧紧抱住大树 闭着眼睛

星星淹死在黑暗的水里

这死亡使夏天忧伤 阴郁的日子

将要一直延续到九月

一只蝴蝶在雨季死去

这本是小事一桩

我在清早路过那滩积水

看见那些美丽的碎片

心情忽然被这小小的死亡击中

我记起就在昨夜雷雨施暴的时候

我正坐在轰隆的巨响之外

怀念着一只蝴蝶
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Poem: "Walking at Night near Gorge with a Stream, to Zimei and Shengyu" 水谷夜行寄子美圣俞

Ancient things today hard to sell./These two masters were a pair of phoenixes,/The most resplendent and charming of the hundred birds. Thanks, HK Jade market

Whew! This is just one poem from the paper I'm finishing up. What work this is! The author takes this poem as one example among many of a characteristic style among many. The whole paper is basically just a small anthology of poems with tags. The author briefly explains why we tag some poems "ancient and hard," and others "balanced and mild," and these explanations are useful, but...it's easy to lose sight of what poetry is all about when your main objective is to tag it. Better sometimes to let it speak for itself.

This poem is from 1044, and memorializes two older poet friends who have been exiled. The poet here has long been an admirer of his friends; it has suited his own identity well to consider them his superior in the world of art, though he has always been more successful in his official career.

"Walking at Night near Gorge with a Stream, to Zimei and Shengyu" 水谷夜行寄子美圣俞

The cold rooster cries in the wild woods,
Over the mountain slope, the moon hangs down.
I put on my clothes and rise to observe the night,
I hitched up my horse and thought to walk right on.
When I came, it was the first clouds of spring,
Now the cold season had arrived.
The milky way leaked into the vast sky,
Falling powerfully out of the nine continents.
A light breeze chilled my lapel,
Warm air cleared me after sleep.
I cherish the memory of my friends in the capital,
With their literature and ale, and invites to high banquets,
Among them were Su and Mei,
Both of them so respected and loved,
With compositions rich in breadth and depth,
And matched, though competing, reputations.

Zimei’s qi was especially heroic,
A thousand pipes that sang with a single will,
Sometimes it was eccentric, even crazy:
Drunken ink that splattered all over.
He was like the thousand-league horse:
Once started it couldn’t be killed,
But surged forward with the ultimate gems,
Each one as good as the last.

Old man Mei dealt in precision,
With boulders worn away by rapids.
For thirty years made he poems,
Look at me, such a one of the younger generation,
His rhetoric was much more clear and new,
Though his mind was older.
He was like a beautiful seductress,
Now aged, but with her own special charms.

Recent poems are so ancient and hard:
One chews only to find them bitter and hard to swallow.
At first it is like eating olives,
For a long time flavor lingers, even increases.
Su’s heroism conquers with its qi,
All over the world the rest of us are frightened,
Mei was as unique as I’ve ever known,
Ancient things today hard to sell.
These two masters were a pair of phoenixes,
The most resplendent and charming of the hundred birds.
Soaring through the cloudy mists,
Their wings were damaged at once,
How can we follow after them,
To the end, cries like the sound of a bell.
Why? I ask, Should remember them so bitterly,
To them we raise our drinks, and grasp our new crabs.

My translation no doubt contains errors, but I am after all a beginner, and this is done with a deadline in mind! Chinese text:

寒鸡号荒林，山壁月倒挂，批衣起视夜，揽辔念行迈。我来夏云初，
素节今已届，高河泻长空，势落九州外，微风动凉襟，晓气清余睡。
缅怀京师友，文酒邈高会，其间苏与梅，二子可畏爱，篇章富纵横，
声价相磨盖。子美气尤雄，万窍号一噫，有时肆颠狂，醉墨洒滂沛；
譬如千里马，已发不可杀，盈前尽珠玑，一一难柬汰。梅翁事清切，
石齿漱寒濑，作诗三十年，视我犹后辈；文词愈清新，心意虽老大，

譬如妖韶女，老自有余态； 近诗尤古硬，咀嚼苦难嘬，初如食橄榄，
真味久愈在。苏豪以气轹，举世徒惊骇；梅穷独我知，古货今难卖。
二子双凤凰，百鸟之嘉瑞，云烟一翱翔，羽翮一摧铩，安得相从游，
终日鸣哕哕。问胡苦思之，对酒把新蟹。
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Daily Post, Weekly Plan

Art by Pop Art Machine

The new translation I took on is coming together slowly, with patches still in pencil and paper but to be typed soon. I've made 1.5 passes through all 15 major poems in the piece, which means that I've gotten through all poems and get the general sense of them but not necessarily every line. For example, a magnificent poem by Mei Yao-ch'en:

The ancients painted tigers and swans, these surpassed the categories of dogs and wild ducks. Now I look on painted feather and insects, the form and image both possessed in sufficiency, The promenader forceful as if leaving, The flyer turns over as if following. The warder-offer as if with raised arms, The cryer as if with moving throat. The jumper tensing his leg muscles, The looker-onner attending to his eyes. Then know the magic of the creation of things, Never to In Piling they muchly paint craft, Illustrate empty fill the piece. Were that master fruithfully the spirits accept, Sit among ministers with ceremonial costume. Grass roots have elaborate intentions, drunken ink gets its familiarity. True power no where in sight, honorable conduct even now is still alone. 古人画虎鹄，尚类狗与鹜。今看画羽虫，形意两俱足。行者势若去， 飞者翻若逐。拒者如举臂，鸣者如动腹。跃者趯其股，顾者注其目。 乃知造物灵，未抵毫端速。毗陵多画工，图写空盈幅。宁公实神授， 坐使群辈服。草根有纤意，醉墨得已熟。权豪不可致，节行今仍独。

This just screams to be done as if by Hopkins or Blake, but such skill will probably be sadly undealt during the week; I hope to settle for semantic soundness, however.

As I poked around looking for previous translations and other help with the poems, I found a poem with the most moving quatrain I've ever seen in Chinese poetry. Its just the opening of another poem by Mei Yaochen, "Sacrifice for a Cat:"

When I had my cat Wubai,
Mice didn't come after my books.
This morning Wubai died.
So I make ritual offerings now,
of rice
and fish.

自有五白猫，鼠不侵我书。
今朝五白死，祭与饭与鱼。

Goals for the Week: 1. Finish this translation. 2. Go over the students' projects and get on those who are straggling.

More to come as I lay in the main text of the translation and refine my poems.
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Translating: Mei Yaochen

Mei Yaochen, tonight's featured poet

Untitled (Thoughts of a 30 Year-Old Man in Ancient China)

Suddenly I wake to find my oak of wisdom has grown thin.
Lazy, I open the precious mirror to put on my face.

With the approaching wind, I fear exhaustion will make me quit,
Like herb of yi-shan, my song of fear grows long.

Green cassia perfumes my airy clothes,
Magic tallies adorn my silken bookbag.

The Western neighbor rhapsodies in vain!
Indissoluble, I arrive at my lord's side.

斗觉琼枝瘦，慵开宝鉴妆。临风恐倦去，倚扇怯歌长。

绿桂熏轻服，灵符佩缥囊。西邻空自赋，不解到君旁。

(Translation under construction)

I've been meaning to study Chinese poetry again formally and now a most wonderful opportunity has come: someone wants to pay me to translate a few poems! Why I want to translate Chinese poetry:


This first poem is by Mei Yaochen 梅尧臣 (1100s, to 1130-something, I think) one of the few poets of the Northern Song dynasty who was celebrated as truly great, and who mastered the supposedly Tang-dynasty art of regulated verse: four closely parallel couplets with intricate internal and external structures of rhyme, theme, parallelism of image and action, and so on. There are many guides to reading such poems, and a few readers seem truly to love them, but I confess that after a brief affair in the years 2002 and 2003, I can really not see the art in them, at least from the point of view of the modern English reader. From this end of things, the poems are evil little games played against one by the Chinese tradition. Nothing means what it seems to mean on the surface; ever noun and verb and image and sound is some kind of allusion, some sliver of an old text that serves to wink at the viewer if he knows it, and stare dully at him if he doesn't.

How could poetry like that ever appeal to any English reader?

Well, for one thing, there are English readers who study the Chinese language. I am of course one such reader. For us, the poem can be a nice game where you write out each character's English gloss and simply stare at the whole array of words to see if you can make some sense of it:

When that immediately doesn't work, you turn to a nice dictionary like dict.baidu.com and Google, and you begin to hack away at the often completely mysterious allusions. As it happens, this poem comes from Mei's early years when he was highly influenced by a particularly allusive bunch -- Prof. Michael Fuller describes them as "insiders." So it's not surprising that this poem is dense with strange allusions, viz.:

琼枝 qiong zhi, a character for a jade pendant of some sort, and the character for "branch." But this word refers to neither of those things; it is the name of a mythical tree, apparently. But the tree also isn't what is referred to here, but most likely is a metaphor for the talent of the worthy official 喻贤才; hence my sheepish "oak of wisdom." Our poet wants to do well in his job.

And so it goes, making each term and then each line a long adventure that a certain kind of reader might find not find tiresome for awhile.

A second class of reader is the reader who does not know Chinese, but perhaps wishes to read Chinese poetry because he or she hopes to catch sight of Chinese aesthetic principles: parallelism will shine through, as will images of plants, animals and people, often quaint and splendid in their variously exotic forms. I hope to write for this last group of people certainly. As a translator for them, I have a chance to shape their reception of what they perceive as Chinese in poetic arts. I will try not to be stuffy or orientalist if possible.

Finally, there is the holy grail: readers of English poetry. These people aren't picky when it comes to nationality -- they'd love to see decent poetry from China, in English. But they want form, humor, meta-awareness of the craft of poetry and all its foibles and tensions. I don't expect to be able to reach these readers right away, if ever at all. But hey, it's something to keep in mind while we practice, right?

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Quixote update

In chapter 4 of Don Quixote, a 15-year-old boy is whipped soundly. For some reason, I am inspired by this image (as was Gustav Doré, apparently)

Last night record snow falls in Texas left me stranded on the tarmac with other passengers in a small Midwest jet bound for Minnesota. As we waited out four and half hours of sitting, I got through 3 more chapters of Don Quixote, with what I think is fair comprehension. My notes continue to grow, but as I was telling my classmate HJ this afternoon, I actually don't know what I'm doing with this "chapter" of my dissertation yet.

I think that's why it's so fun.
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Dissertation: Beginning the Quixote

Don Quixote drawing by Picasso -- I guess probably the best illustration of the character, ever. Here we can see our hero, looking especially 瘦俏, along with his trusty horse 驽骍难得.

I just finished reading the first chapter of Don Quixote in Chinese, part of a reading I now intend to make into a chapter of my dissertation, tentatively called something like "Don Quixote in China." (Full on-the-fly reading notes will be located here.)

I think the point of telling this story is to appreciate how Yang Jiang learned something very powerful about herself during the course of her own translation of the Quixote during China's Cultural Revolution, and we can see from her later essays that the figure of the Quixote never goes away -- I wish I had already made a file containing all the references to "Quixote" that she makes, but I will certainly record them from now on. For me, this is excuse enough to tell the story of Yang Jiang's Quixote. But given that must offer up something else as well, something at stake in the larger Chinese literary scene, and something at stake politically and socially, I will also examine how the Quixote has become a much-loved figure in Chinese literature, a major source for learning about parody and the ancient irony of self-deprecation. This is of course an overly-large and ill-defined project. What else would I ever do?

Sigh.

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Translation comparison

As I translated the last paper, I came across two passages that were translations of Leo Ou-fan Lee's Chinese. Here's a comparison between the Chinese, my translation of the Chinese, and the original English -- a useful exercise perhaps.

Passages below the fold:


The source of these remarks is

Lee, Leo Ou-fan. Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930-1945. Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999.

The Chinese version our author, QIn Yanhua, uses is

李欧梵：《上海摩登》，毛尖译，北京，北京大学出版社2001年版.

Passage 1, Original:

正如李欧梵所分析的，“是为了要把他的编辑方针和流行的编辑法区别开来：当时几乎所有的文学期刊的实际操纵者都是小‘党派’——在一个文学社团里的几个志同道合的朋友，持他们自己所提倡的文学和意识形态立场”[11]。

Shi "wants to put some distance between the guiding principles of his editing and popular editing methods. At the time, the commanding pattern of almost all literary periodicals was to form miniature 'schools' -- a group of friends in a literary society with shared ways and aims, supporting the literature they themselves promoted and their ideological positions."

p. 136

"Shi's emphasis on nonpartisanship was meant to distinguish his editorial policy from prevailing practice: most literary journals were in fact run by small 'cliques' -- groups of several like-minded friends who belonged to a literary society and advocated the same literary and ideological positions."

....

Passage 2, Original:

“李欧梵指出：“尽管施蛰存在‘创刊宣言’里声称他并不预备‘造成任何一种文学上的思潮、主义’，但杂志上刊登的外国文学作品清楚地映出了他本人对欧洲现代主义文学的偏好。”

My translation (sketched only, as I knew I would look up the quote later):

As Leo Ou-fan Lee points out, "Even though Shi Zhecun in his 'editors announcement' ... preference for European modernist literature."

Finally, the passage in Prof. Lee's original, from p. 137 of the book:

Thus, in spite of his avowed refusal to promote any literary trend or doctrine, the works of foreign literature published in the journal clearly mirrored his own literary preferences for European modernism, although he was not conscious of a modernist movement as such.

As you can see, the Chinese translation looks pretty good overall, though there are some minor differences. And it bothers me a little bit that our author elides part of Prof. Lee's sentence -- but I can understand that he or she wants to focus on the question that does not involve whether Lee was aware of international trends.


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Translation note

A diagram showing the function of "general demeanor" 精神气质 in 'urban travel,' from a dictionary on the CNKI website. The original source of the diagram is cited here.

A stop in Northeast Harbor, Maine. I won't have any time to be productive for the rest of this day or possibly the next, but I did finally type up the outline of my next translation gig in the morning. A few other notes from the first pages of my manuscript:


The continuing dilemma of syntax

Syntax simply must change when one is translating from one language to another. My previous efforts to preserve syntax as much as possible were well-intended, but not as realistic as my thoughts on the subject are now. I think it's not that I should attempt to preserve syntax so much as be aware of syntax. Sometimes terms must be presented in the original order, which will require a jiggering of the auxiliary words. Other times key terms and auxiliaries, as well as the relationships between them, can be preserved by changing the order.

Example (though I will not exposit on it in detail here):

张静庐虽然不是现代书局和施蛰存之间雇佣关系的直接缔结者，但是创办《现代》杂志的设想、雇请施蛰存担任主编的动议却是由他首先提出的，并且在施蛰存主编杂志的筹划和实践过程中，给予了积极的指导和支持。

Although Zhang Jinglu was not the most direct agent in the employer-employee relationship between the Contemporary Book Company and Shi Zhecun, still, the idea to create Les Contemporains and the motion to hire Shi on as chief editor were originally Zhang's. Further, during both the planning and the actual practice of having Shi Zhecun as editor, Zhang gave enthusiastic guidance and support.

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Thursday, Christmas Eve

Lady Gaga - New Music - More Music Videos

嘎嘎嗚啦啦

Lost an entire day yesterday to sleeping late and family schtuff. 'Tis the season.

Christmas Eve. I started working on a new translation for Nobo, but rather than work on that this afternoon first I decided to render the Lady Gaga song "Bad Romance" into Chinese. Following A's advice, I tried to write Chinese that scanned along with the melody of the song. For the basic format of the translation and all the onomatopoetic sounds, I used a translation by leoharlem728 on a Taiwanese music site.

A trashy novel I stole from

Oh-oh-oh-oh-oooh!
Oh-oh-oooh-oh-oh!
Caught in a bad romance
(噢噢噢噢噢
噢噢噢噢噢
陷在噬情曲裡)

Rah-rah-ah-ah-ah!
Rom-mah-rom-mum-mah!
GaGa-oo-la-la!
Want your bad romance
(羅羅阿阿阿
羅麻羅麻麻麻
嘎嘎嗚啦啦
需要你噬情曲)

I want your ugly
I want your disease
I want your everything
As long as it’s free I want your love
Love-love-love I want your love
(需要你醜陋
需要你邪氣
需要你所－有－的
你免費的愛我就需要
愛愛愛我就需要)

I want your drama
The touch of your hand
I want your leather-studded
Kiss in the sand
I want your love love-love-love
I want your love
(需要你淚雨 、
你手的触摸。
需要你帶釘皮革、
沙上的吻
需要你愛 愛愛愛
需要你愛）

You know that I want you
And you know that I need you
I want it bad
Bad romance
(你知道你我要
你也知道我需要
瘈狗要噬
噬情曲)

I want your loving
And I want your revenge
You and me could write a bad romance
I want your loving
All your love is revenge
You and me could write a bad romance
(我要你爱抚
我要你报复
你與我能夠寫噬情曲
我要你爱抚
我要你报复
你與我能夠寫噬情曲)

I want your horror
I want your design
‘Cause you’re a criminal
As long as your mine
I want your love
Love-love-love I want your love
(我要你恐怖
我要你謀反
而你是犯人吧
只要你屬我
需要你愛
愛愛愛 需要你愛）

I want your psycho
Your vertigo stick
Want you in my rear window baby you're sick
I want your love Love-love-love
I want your love
(需要你《驚魂》
你《迷魂》棒
你把我《後窗》插進 變態寶貝
需要你愛 愛愛愛
需要你愛）

You know that I want you
And you know that I need you
I want it bad
Bad romance
(你知道你我要
你也知道我需要 （我是變狗寶貝）
瘈狗要噬
噬情曲)

...

Walk-walk fashion baby
Work it move that bitch curazy
walk-walk fashion baby
Work it move that bitch crazy
walk-walk fashion baby
Work it I'm a freak bitch baby
(走走時髦寶貝
勞之動之瘈狗要噬
走走時髦寶貝
勞之動之瘈狗要噬
勞之我是變狗寶貝)

I want your love
And I want your revenge
I want your love
I don’t wanna be friends
(需要你爱
也要报复
需要你爱
做朋友我不願

J'veux ton amour et j'veux ton revenge
J'veux ton amour I don’t wanna be friends
(私はあなたの愛をしたい
watashi wa anata no ai wo shi tai

私は復讐したい
watashi wa fukushū shi tai
做朋友我不願)

Adapted from

http://www.kkbox.com.tw/forum_web/topic_index.php?topic_id=102402
(original translation by leoharlem728; thanks and apologies for the changes)








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Thoughts on Translating

So I'm translating another article for pay. It's really very pleasant work. I wish writing my dissertation was like a translation -- just stare at one document, read it carefully, and then write out another document in perfect response. Then turn it in. Then receive the money back. What an elegant model of thinking!

I know writing my dissertation is a much more complex task than translating, but there are a number of lessons to be learned from translation. Here's a few that come to mind:


1. Translating is really careful reading.

1a. A good way to inspect a Chinese article or even book-length expository work is to translate the chapters, then the section headings, and finally the main idea sentences of paragraphs.

2. Translating Chinese literary criticism exposes the assumptions of Chinese thinking.

I'm not so sure where I'm going to go with this idea yet, but check out some examples of an article I've just begun to translate for my own purposes:

This poem was written when the poet was 42 years old; he goes through the course of a bird returning home in each of the different seasons spring, summer, fall, winter as a metaphor for the experience of his own life, from service as an official to reclusion.

My emphasis on "experience:" I'm interested in the biographical understanding of poetry, and thus the connections between history, poetry, and experience, in Chinese thinking.

The poet tends towards the free life of field and garden, producing a special feeling for birds in flight; birds seem to become his only true friends.

That's an interesting understanding that helps bridge the connection between the subject of the poem (birds) and the allegorical referent (the course of the poet's own experience; the grown and change of the poet's mind)

(Source: 略论陶渊明诗歌中的鸟、菊意象
Image of bird and chrysanthemum in Tao Yuanming's poems
<<广东青年干部学院学报>>2004年 第18卷 第01期
作者: 刘振燕,

期刊 ISSN : 1009-5446(2004)01-0087-02)

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Translation: Anti-Fascist Screed

Chiang Kai-shek, Fascist

On the Dual Nature of the Nationalism Advocated by the Nationalist Literary and Arts School

by Qian Zhengang (see my Google docs page for complete translation; the original Chinese has a Google doc as well)

In addition to some more work on the theory of autobiography, I did a bit more translating of this latest paper. The main ideas of the argument in the latter half are:

Chiang Kai-shek, the most important supporter of the Nationalist Literary Movement, was already by 1927 no longer faithful to the Three Principles of the People but rather a devoted follower of Fascism.

Since the Nationalist Literary School took its orders from the Nationalist Literary Movement, no matter what their own ideology was like, for any and all ideology they all could only proceed to propagate Fascism, accepting or further explicating the ideas of their instigator, Chiang Kai-shek.

Well then, why did the Nationalist Literary School also propagate the egalitarian nationalism of Sun Yat-sen in theory and in parts of their works? I believe this is a result of the influence of the authoritative power of Sun Yat-sen's ideology. Sun Yat-sen was once the public leader of each revolutionary class of China; his Three Principles of the People were once the theoretical manifestation of the public will of each revolutionary class of China.

In one area, that accepting the government of Chiang Kai-shek required disseminating Fascism formed the deep nature; in the other area the utter necessity to fulsomely praise the nationalism of Sun Yat-sen formed the surface nature.

This is of course vaguely disturbing to translate, but I like that it has me thinking more about the lives and personalities of people like the author of the paper. Unfortunately the word that comes to mind is 'warped.' Deep feelings of some sort seem to brim just under the surface of this piece, but I can't say exactly what those are. Meanwhile the logic of the argument has the tacky, tired feel of Chinese inner/outer and deep/surface idioms. One thinks of De Francis, Hannis and others who have argued that Chinese language stifles innovation:

As I have elucidated above, for Sun Yat-sen's egalitarianism we should express affirmation, while for ultranationalism wet must steadfastly offer rejection. Well then, how should we distinguish this nationalism possessing a dual nature? The key to the problem lies in making clear the structural relationship of the dual nature, which means we must make clear which nature resides in a deep layer of the structure, and which in a surface layer.

Notably, what "structure" would refer to in real life is left out of the picture, along with any apparent realization that the term "structure" here is an empty abstract, a simple rhetorical tool really meant for no more than to emphasize what is no doubt a very safe point: Fascism is bad, and so is the KMT.

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Next translation: Fascist screed

Where to find the Fascism: Vanguard Monthly, a KMT literary journal

The next translation I'm doing for Nobo contains some interesting information about Fascism among KMT writers in the early 1930s.



In 1933 Chen Xinchun was urging his readers to be more "Like Italy's Mussolini, like Germany's Hitler..." And in 1931, a fairly scary dramatic poem (ju shi) called "The Blood of the Yellow People" by Huang Zhenxia 黄震遐 gives us a vision of racism in the Chinese language. Set in the 13th century from the perspective of the 'yellow' Mongols who had scored a major defeat against the 'white'/'caucasian' Russians, the poem's beginning reads (first draft):

Give up ba, you menial fools, begging for your life,
Die faster ba, why you need to frown so?
Escape ya, crestfallen king of Russia;
Lie down ya, vicious mad dogs of Europa;
Topple ya, fabled high towers of Moscow;
Roll ya, Caucasian heads growing yellow hair;
Horrifying ya, boiling oil for frying corpses;
Frightening ya, rotten skeletons all over, what bad men;
Dead spirits clutching at white maidens embracing with all their might;
Beauties' lovely heads become hideous skeletons;
Savages like wild animals in the palace, combat fierce and mighty;
Knights of the cross, faces blanched with sorrow;
For a thousand years the coffins leach out their vile smells'
Iron heels trampling broken bones the cry of the camels becomes a weird hou;
God has fled, the demons have raised their firey whips of vengeance;
The yellow peril is come! The yellow peril is come!
Brave knights of Asia, show your bloody, man-eating faces.

绝望吧，你们这些哀求饶命的手，

快点死吧，何必多皱眉头？

逃呀，斡罗斯颓靡的王侯；

躲呀，欧罗巴失魂的猛狗；

倾倒呀，莫斯科万重的高楼；

滚呀，高加索人长着黄毛的头；

恐怖呀，煎着尸体的沸油；

可怕呀，遍地的腐骸如何凶丑；

死神捉着白姑娘拼命地搂；

美人螓首变成狰狞的髑髅；

野兽般的生番在故宫里蛮争恶斗；

十字军战士的脸上充满了哀愁；

千年的棺材泄出它凶秽的恶臭；

铁蹄践着断骨骆驼的鸣声变成怪吼；

上帝已逃，魔鬼扬起了火鞭复仇；

黄祸来了！黄祸来了！

亚西亚勇士们张大吃人的血口。

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We just some country boys - country walk, country talk

...Don't bring it round here 'less ya know fa sho' it's jumpin off

Shen Congwen with Zhang Zhaohe (later his wife)

So the last paper I translated contained this passage:

It can be said that works of the Beijing School always manifest two types of clearly opposed worlds: one is the world of the rural villages, one is the more civilized cities and towns. But even though they clearly bring a critical eye to the representation of the urban world, actually this is mostly a foil for their beloved rural world. This is also extremely strange, because the Beijing School writers are mostly sophisticated intellectuals, yet they praise the pastoral, frequently taking on their own “pastoral” personae with great satisfaction. Shen Congwen put it well when he said, “I must ask you to compare two of my short works, “Baizi” and “Portrait of Eight Steeds” (Ba jun tu), so you can understand my moral sensibility, what is good, what bad, about rural villages, those great loves of intellectuals. You’ll see what makes a country person country, and how this is reflected concretely in my work.”

"Country person" doesn't sound as good as I'd like, but it does sort of remind me that there is a similar aesthetic at work between American and Chinese celebrations of unsophisticated rustics.


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Tale of the Chicken Man

It's Spring Break, time for a little bit of extra pleasure reading. Just for fun, I'm reading translations of Chinese poetry that Arthur Waley did in the 1910s. For English readers of those days, it must have been like going your whole life without any knowledge of Chinese food and then suddenly getting a free pass to eat at a world-class restaurant featuring Western takes on Asian classics. Just read this one, it's outstanding:

Thank you, archive.org.

How does this poem sound in Chinese? Since we have the internet nowadays, we should be able to compare Waley's translations directly with Chinese texts, even as we sit in coffeeshops and sip our beers. The trouble with many of these particularly ancient poems is that "anon., 1st cent. B.C." is not the most helpful of citations. I'll be honest: I took over an hour to track this poem down. But it was a very interesting journey, a tour via Google through many odd corners of the web. I knew I was getting close when I located the phrase, Runan ji 汝南雞, lit. "the cock of Ru'nan [Ju-nan]" which many dictionaries online gloss as "In ancient times, a chicken that came from Runan, said to have a particularly good crow." From there I discovered that another common idiomatic phrase is Runan chen ji 汝南晨雞, "the morning cock at Ju-nan." Aha! From there it was a simple matter to track the poem back to a 12th-century text called the Yuefu shi ji 樂府詩集. This gigantic anthology of songs contains the Ji ming ge 雞鳴歌 "Cock-Crow Song." Commentary in this entry tells us that back in the Han dynasty, there were "chicken men" jiren 雞人, who were in charge of guarding the chickens on the palace grounds. When the roosters crowed just before dawn, the "chicken men" would also lift up their voices in song. The commentary does not explcitly say so, but I suppose this is what they sang.

Chinese Text:

東 方 欲 明 星 爛 爛 ， 汝 南 晨 雞 登 壇 喚 。 曲 終 漏 盡 嚴 具 陳 ， 月 沒 星 稀 天 下 旦 。 千 門 萬 戶 遞 魚 鑰 ， 宮 中 城 上 飛 烏 鵲 。
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