Your English is good, but a little too technical. I'm a native English speaker, and I have no idea what pudicity means. It would be better to say that 节 is fidelity. 洲 in the poem would be translated as island. Please continue to do these! I enjoyed reading it. But, don't neglect your studies. :)
Oh, and "tweedle" is not commonly used to describe the sounds of birds in English. "Tweedle" would remind English speakers of the character "Tweedle-dum" in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass (Alice in Wonderland). For little birds, we usually use "chirp," and for geese we usually use "honk". In this case I think I would translate it "call".
...It's technical because I basically lived off my dictionary... And when I typed in "bird call" in Chinese, it only gave me "birdcall" and "tweedle". If I want "chirp", I have to type in "喳喳声" in Chinese...
Thank you for your kind and helpful comments!
And, the reason for this: I'm a normal Chinese girl, and that means my English is more like Buffy's French -- pretty good for a laugh but sometimes even me myself don't understand it. The thing is, I fell for English fanfictions in 2003, and I've read them almost 6 hours a day till now. Hence I can understand most articles in English. But if I want to use my English to find a job, I'd better start to work on writing now...
Hi - saw your post in zhongwen, where I'm one of the co-moderators. This sounds like a fun idea -- thanks for doing it! Your English is really impressive already; very natural and colloquial.
A couple of questions about the Chinese :) --
雎鸠 is "fish-hawk," or something like that, but I've seen translations of this poem that render the word as "osprey" (鱼鹰) or "heron" (苍鹭) or some other more common river bird. "Mandarin duck" is 鸳鸯;
君子 is normally "gentleman" or "refined / moral man," of course, but here, doesn't it have the original, literal meaning of "a lord's son?" Also, is 好 in the first stanza read as hào? I'd thought that it was read and understood as hǎo, giving the line the meaning of "a good mate for a lord's son."
You are right about 雎鸠, now I've looked it up in my dictionary. For "mandarin duck", I'm just guessing, because, being a city girl, I don't have many chance to know birds. And "mandarin duck" is the model for fidelity (Thank you dustthouart!), although they are any thing but loyal in reality.
For 君子, your opinion makes sense, though I still don't think it's "lord's son", 'cos this poem is a folk song in its days.
For 好, when it's read as hǎo, it's an adjective, adverb or auxiliary. When it's read as hào, it's an verb. And I'm comfused now, 'cos one book says it's hǎo like you said, another book says it's hào...
I see what you mean about 君子 - my annotated copy of the 诗经 doesn't have a note for it, so I guess they're understanding it in the conventional sense. Also, the 白话 version of 君子好逑 that it gives is "君子祥和她配成双," which would support the reading of 'hào'.
...but then again, my dictionary has an entry for 好逑, and gives the Pinyin romanization as hǎoqiú. I've got a bunch of books on Chinese poetry, and poetry in translation, but unfortunately, most of it's halfway between Philadelphia and Beijing at the moment, so I can't cross-check to see how other translators have understood it. I do have one book here, Chinese Poetry by Wai-lim Yip, which gives a gloss of "fit; good" for 好. And the 诗经 translation here gives that stanza as "Guan-guan go the ospreys, On the islet in the river. The modest, retiring, virtuous, young lady: -- For our prince a good mate she."
-- Though I have to admit that I don't like any of Yip's translations, and I'm not crazy about the other one, either.
Comments 6
It would be better to say that 节 is fidelity.
洲 in the poem would be translated as island.
Please continue to do these! I enjoyed reading it. But, don't neglect your studies. :)
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Reply
And when I typed in "bird call" in Chinese, it only gave me "birdcall" and "tweedle". If I want "chirp", I have to type in "喳喳声" in Chinese...
Thank you for your kind and helpful comments!
And, the reason for this:
I'm a normal Chinese girl, and that means my English is more like Buffy's French -- pretty good for a laugh but sometimes even me myself don't understand it. The thing is, I fell for English fanfictions in 2003, and I've read them almost 6 hours a day till now. Hence I can understand most articles in English. But if I want to use my English to find a job, I'd better start to work on writing now...
Reply
A couple of questions about the Chinese :) --
雎鸠 is "fish-hawk," or something like that, but I've seen translations of this poem that render the word as "osprey" (鱼鹰) or "heron" (苍鹭) or some other more common river bird. "Mandarin duck" is 鸳鸯;
君子 is normally "gentleman" or "refined / moral man," of course, but here, doesn't it have the original, literal meaning of "a lord's son?"
Also, is 好 in the first stanza read as hào? I'd thought that it was read and understood as hǎo, giving the line the meaning of "a good mate for a lord's son."
Reply
You are right about 雎鸠, now I've looked it up in my dictionary. For "mandarin duck", I'm just guessing, because, being a city girl, I don't have many chance to know birds. And "mandarin duck" is the model for fidelity (Thank you dustthouart!), although they are any thing but loyal in reality.
For 君子, your opinion makes sense, though I still don't think it's "lord's son", 'cos this poem is a folk song in its days.
For 好, when it's read as hǎo, it's an adjective, adverb or auxiliary. When it's read as hào, it's an verb. And I'm comfused now, 'cos one book says it's hǎo like you said, another book says it's hào...
Reply
...but then again, my dictionary has an entry for 好逑, and gives the Pinyin romanization as hǎoqiú.
I've got a bunch of books on Chinese poetry, and poetry in translation, but unfortunately, most of it's halfway between Philadelphia and Beijing at the moment, so I can't cross-check to see how other translators have understood it. I do have one book here, Chinese Poetry by Wai-lim Yip, which gives a gloss of "fit; good" for 好. And the 诗经 translation here gives that stanza as "Guan-guan go the ospreys,
On the islet in the river.
The modest, retiring, virtuous, young lady: --
For our prince a good mate she."
-- Though I have to admit that I don't like any of Yip's translations, and I'm not crazy about the other one, either.
Reply
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