Kanshi in Translation: How Its Features Can Be Effectively Communicated

0 0 1 201 1146 Harvard University 9 2 1345 14.0 Normal 0 false false false EN-US ZH-CN X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; text-align:justify; text-justify:inter-ideograph; line-height:200%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language:EN-US;} Four approaches to presenting kanshi in translation have been in use, the most common being (1) where a translation is presented and nothing else. The inclusion of the following- (2) the kanji text, (3) kundoku renderings of how poem-lines might be parsed and read aloud "in Japanese," and (4) a visual sense of the caesurae and rhymes involved in the original by giving Chinese or ondoku read­ings-are improvements that have been employed (with increasing infrequency, the higher the number). A fifth approach (illustrated here), one incorporating the features already noted, would engage the two perennial problems of translation that usually still remain: "naturalization" vs. "barbarization," and the handling of allusions. Currently what one gets, while generally helpful, is only the paraphrasable sense of poetic lines-much of the "poeticity" of the text, namely, concrete metaphors, and especially allusions, is overlooked; the translation skates over the surface of the poem and ignores what lies beneath and is most important. Hence, the proposed inclusion of the following: (5) naturalized and barbarized translations to bring out the "literal" and paraphrasable sense of lines, and (6) notes to clarify the expressions being used, especially allusions, in terms of their historical use, referentiality, and contextual implication.