Goodbye at Yellow Crane Tower
Translating Li Bai
Goodbye to Meng Haoran at Yellow Crane Tower is a straightforward description of a farewell setting: it is early spring (the third month) and the flowers are in bloom, enveloping the place like a thick mist. Meng Haoran, an old friend, is sailing down the river to Yangzhou. Li Bai the poet climbs the Yellow Crane Tower to glimpse his friend's boat, but all he sees is a speck of sail amidst the blue hills and the Yangzi River flowing into the horizon.
The English word-for-word text reads (each / / represents a single Chinese word):
Old / chap (old friend) / west / departs / Yellow / Crane / Tower
Mist (smoke) / flowers / third / month / down / Yang / zhou
Single (lonely) / sail / distant / scene / Blue / hills / limitless
Only / see / Long / River (i.e. Yangzi) / sky / horizon / flow
There are two ways to "activate" (bring to life) the literal text in an English translation. One is to add only the minimum necessary words that are not mentioned explicitly, but are implied, so that the narrative reads smoothly and faithfully in English. The reader is left to himself to interpret and expand on this bare transliterated text that stays as close as possible to the literal rendering. Here's my minimal translation:
At Yellow Crane Tower you leave us, heading west.
In the third month, with flowers thick as mist, you go down to Yangzhou.
All I see in the distance is a lonely sail fringed by blue hills
As the Long River flows into the wide horizon.
What the poet didn't say
Obviously, it is not very satisfactory. The next method is to expand and put your own guesswork into those gaps where the poet didn't say anything explicit.
What the poet didn't say is the significance of Yellow Crane Tower to the farewell party. Li Bai, perhaps with a group of friends, were bidding farewell to Meng Haoran at the tower, or Li Bai could have climbed up the tower for a better view of Meng sailing in a boat down the river. Presumably Li Bai watched the distant image of the lonely sail from the top of the tower (the key word is "distant", which implies that one has to be on a certain height to have a good view, so we may safely assume Li Bai actually climbed the tower to see the boat).
Only once was colour mentioned, i.e. "blue", as in the blue hills. Yellow Crane Tower is a proper name of the building (built in 223AD in Snake Hill, Wuhan city) and does not necessarily mean the tower was yellow in colour. Neither did the poet mention the colours of the flowers, the colour of the river or the colour of the sail.
Almost all translators prefer Method 2, where they are given the "freedom" to add their own views and understanding, so that the translated text in English has additional descriptive terms not found in the original. The rule is that such terms must be based on something the poet did not say outright but which he did imply, and which we can interpret from context. For example, Li Bai did not mention climbing up the five-storey tower or watching the boat from the tower top; but the word "distant" implies he did so.
What is not implied, therefore, should not be added in the translation. Take colours. As mentioned earlier, Li Bai observed only "blue hills", and nothing more. He didn't say "blue sky" or "red blossoms" or "green willows". If we allow translators (see below) to freely add new colours and extraneous terms (just because they think these sounded poetic), then what is there to stop future translators adding "grey" sail, Li Bai's "white beard" and lilacs at the foot of the tower?
Consider this translation by Xu Yuanchong. He is supposedly popular in China for producing many English translations of Chinese works, according to my friend Belinda Bian Jianhua who does academic research and teaching on translation techniques, previously at Nankai University and now at Qingdao University. I don't know Xu from Adam, but judging from his text (which Belinda e-mailed to me), it is defective. His stereotyped rhyme is no different from verses found in schoolgirls' diaries:
Seeing Meng Hao-ran off at Yellow Crane Tower
My friend has left the west where the Yellow Crane towers
For River Town green with willows and red with flowers.
His lessening sail is lost in the boundless blue sky,
Where I see but the endless River rolling by.
[translated by Xu Yuanchong]
Xu's translation is unacceptable for another reason -- it is dishonest. It leaves out the mention of Spring (third month) and adds things that Li Bai didn't say -- "lessening" sail (whatever that means), blue sky or a river town with green willows and red flowers. Neither did Li Bai say the river is "rolling by". The whole piece demeans the great poet, making him no better than a schoolgirl.
Here's another rendering, by Yang Xianyi. Yang is a good prose translator but has no musical ear. In his and his wife's translation of Hung Lou Meng (Dream of Red Mansions), for instance, the English prose text is detailed, accurate and engaging, but many of the embedded poems in the novel are rendered indifferently. [See Yang's rendering of Lin Taiyi's Flower Burial Song.]
Li Bai's original 28-word poem is now almost double in Yang's English text. The rendering is workmanlike and unmemorisable. It looks like a poem, with short line breaks, but is actually prose, without cadence, and without the deep sentiments and deeper insight into human nature that are necessary to qualify a block of versified text as poetry.
Seeing Meng Haoran off from Yellow Crane Tower
[translated by Yang]
At Yellow Tower in the west
My old friend says farewell;
In the mist and flowers of spring
He goes down to Yangzhou;
Lonely sail, distant shadow,
Vanish in blue emptiness;
All I see is the great river
Flowing into the far horizon.
Here is a third rendering, by
well-known American
translator Witter Bynner:
You have left me behind,
old friend, at the Yellow Crane Tower
On your way to visit Yangchou
in the misty month of flowers
Your sail, a single shadow, becomes one with the blue sky
Till now I see only the river, on its way to heaven.
Some of the poetic sentiments of Li Bai have been carried over in Bynner's English. The translation is not perfect ("sky" and "heaven" are repetitious; and the original phrase, bi-shan or "blue hills", has become "blue sky"), but it is nonetheless a better, more mature poetic attempt. You will note too a tiresome similarity in rhyme between Xu and Witter: tower and flowers.
Translating poetry is different from translating prose. It involves not only questions of accuracy and honesty, but also, for the translator, a ear for the music in the original poem, and then hopefully, to convey a feel of that music in the translation. Usually good prose writers make poor poets. James Joyce and Virginia Woolf wrote enchanting, poetic-like essays and short stories, but their small number of verses are just verses, not poetry.
Here're my own attempts:
(literal):
Old friend, you leave us at Yellow Crane Tower, heading west.
It's the third month in the season of flowers, when you go down to Yangzhou
All I see is your lonely sail against the blue hills
As the Yangzi River flows to the sky's edge.
(contemplative, with a touch of regret):
It's the season of flowers but you leave us for Yangzhou.
All I see from Yellow Crane Tower
Is the speck of your sail against the blue hills
Flowing with the Yangzi River into the sky.
(interpretative):
In a month heavy with flowers,
you leave us for Yangzhou.
From Yellow Crane Tower
there's only a sail in the blue yonder.
Former Chinese president Jiang Zemin presents a calligraphy of Yellow Crane Tower poem to French president Chirac in Beijing, late-1990s. Chirac is holding a translation sheet of the poem.
Li Bai after a cup or two.
