Translator's Note

“Wuling Spring Variations” is a series of translation variations based on Li Qingzhao’s Ci poem, “武陵春.” The translations try to rethink the idea of accessibility in multilingual cultures and the question of how to present Chinese classical poetry to contemporary multilingual readers and readers with multilingual experiences. Instead of seeing translation as the product of one stable text, I argue that translation is a process of remaking and reproducing. Seen from this perspective, the mode of “variations” becomes an argument against consumer culture. Making and reading poetry is a slow-cook game. Reading and reciting a poem repeatedly is part of the tradition of learning classical Chinese poetry but seems to be an “othered” habit for most contemporary readers of any language. How can I invite my readers to jump out of the “survey” mode and join the circle dance around a bonfire?

On the textual level, each variation provides opportunities for different poetic attention: sound, ideogram, grammar and syntax, allusion, form, alternative traditions of reading, and new interpretations. Readers are granted different kinds of access to the same poem through different variations. For example, where the subject is often left unexpressed in a classical Chinese poem, my translation facilitates multiple readings experiences by including the subject or leaving it out across different variations. As an ideographic language, many Chinese characters carry an internal visual image, which could be lost when translated into the Roman alphabet; the variations encourage a detour to familiarization with certain images by weaving them into the translation. The final variation’s use of lines borrowed from Ezra Pound and Lord Byron is another experiment on the globalized and multilingual reading experience.

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Chengru He