Translator’s Note

The Peony Pavilion is a famous 昆曲/Kunqu Opera written in 1589 by Tang Xianzu, which tells a romantic tragicomedy of Du Liniang and Liu Mengmei. The play advocated for personal desire and the human spirit, which challenged the prevailing moralism of the Cheng-Zhu school in his time. The most challenging thing I encountered during my translation was to and keep the original musical pattern so that it could be performed in a similar manner and be accurate in meaning.

Kunqu Opera is one of the oldest forms of Chinese opera, and it has a strict vocal system; elements of this strict vocal system include “一字多音/elaborate melismatic singing,” “依字行腔/shaping the melody according to the word tones,” and “韵/rhyme.” In order for my English translations to be able to be sung in Kunqu Opera, I tried to make one Chinese character correspond to one English syllable, as shown below. I also chose English words with fewer consonants which made them sound more like the Chinese characters. For example, I used “martins” instead of “swallows” when I translated “燕.” In Kunqu Opera , there are 29 rhyme categories (韵学骊珠/Pearls of Rhyme Studies, （清Qing Dynasty）沈乘麐 Shen Chenglin, 2006). Each category groups Chinese characters with similar “韵母/rhyme” together. Some categories have characters with the exact same rhyme; the rhyme category of “干gan韩han韵rhyme,” for example, groups Chinese characters with “an” rhyme (韵母)together. Other rhyme categories group Chinese characters with almost the same rhyme; the rhyme category of “真zhen文wen韵rhyme” groups Chinese characters that rhyme (韵母) with “en, in, un” together. The selected songs rhymed in “天tian田tian韵rhyme” which contains characters that rhyme（韵母）with “ian, uan.” Since there are no sounds like “ ian, uan” in English and “ian, uan” has the common sound “n”, I used the idea of rhyme category in Kunqu Opera to group English words end with similar sounds “n” together to imitate “天tian田tian韵rhyme.” I used words such as “fine, fane, broken, sampan.” I also used words that end with “ing”, since “ing” is always sung as “in” in English songs.

There are several characters that have general or ambiguous meanings or are even untranslatable, in which case I consider the meaning, context, and rhythm and rhyme to make the song singable and accurate. For example, there is no accurate English term to translate “轩(xuan).” “轩(xuan)” can refer to a variety of architectural forms, for example, pavilion, cot, corridor with windows, and so on. In this case, the author only wanted to indicate that there was a green architecture, and it does not matter which form it is. The author chose “轩(xuan)” to make it rhyme in Chinese. And, because “轩 (xuan)” is not an important symbol in the original context, in this case, I chose an architecture name “fane” to make it rhyme in English. It is the same case with “船(chuan)/boat”. The author used “船 (chuan)/boat” to make it rhyme. There are various types of “船 (chuan)/boat” which does not matter what specific type it is, so I chose “sampan” to translate “船 (chuan)/boat” to make it rhyme. Another example, “荼蘼” is a kind of flower in the rose family that blooms at the end of spring, and the characters used in Chinese literature symbolizes the end of the spring. There is no accurate English term to translate “荼蘼,” so I chose flower names “sweetbriar, roses” from the rose family which also bloom at the end of spring to fit in the rhythm. In short, you do not have to use the word with exact the same meaning as the author to be accurate in translation. As long as you convey the same idea as the author, it should be fine.

I further aimed to be as accurate as possible, given that other translations ignore the broader context of the song and the natural law. The grammar in classic Chinese poetry is different from that in modern Chinese. There are many omissions and rearrangements of sentence components in classic Chinese poetry. There are no tense and single or plural forms of nouns. There are also some idioms. Sometimes readers have to infer the meaning of the poems by considering the broader context, common sense (natural law, in this case), and the original source of the idioms. In this case, “朝飞at dawn fly暮卷at dusk roll up，云霞clouds翠轩green pavilion，雨丝silk like rain风片breeze，烟波mist and wave画船painted boat” has only verbs and nouns. The relationship among those verbs and nouns is unknown. When performing these lines, the singer sings while looking at the scenery, so the above lines should be in the present tense. Since it does not indicate clearly in the original text, the nouns can be either singular or plural forms. I chose the forms by considering the meaning, context, and rhythm. “朝飞暮卷” literally means “at dawn fly, at dusk roll up” which lacks subjects. By only looking at the single line “朝飞at dawn fly暮卷 at dusk roll up,” readers do not know what flies at dawn and what rolls up at dusk. “朝飞at dawn fly暮卷 at dusk roll up” is an idiom from “画栋朝飞南浦云，珠帘暮卷西山雨” by王勃/Wang Bo in “滕王阁诗/The poem of the Tengwang Pavilion”, depicting the changing weather and beautiful scenery.“画栋朝飞南浦云，珠帘暮卷西山雨” means “At dawn, clouds from Nanpu fly through the painted pavilions. At dusk, rain and winds from the western mountain roll up the beaded blinds.” Based on王勃/Wang Bo, we can infer that “云霞Clouds翠轩 green pavilion” was seen at dawn, and “雨丝silk rain 风片 breeze” was seen at dusk. It is the clouds that “朝飞fly at dawn” through the “翠轩green pavilion.” In 王勃 Wang Bo, it is “clouds fly at dawn, blinds roll up.” But there is no blind in the original context, so what “暮卷roll up at dusk” is still unknown. 许渊冲/ Xu Yuanzhong, a translator of The Peony Pavilion, interpreted “朝飞暮卷/云霞翠轩/雨丝风片/烟波画船” as “Together At dawn on high rainbow clouds fly;/ At dusk the green pavilion is seen./ In misty waves mingle the threads of rain,/ The wind swells sails of painted boats in vain (许渊冲/Xu Yuanchong 2021)”. Xu thought “云霞Clouds翠轩 green pavilion” are two events: clouds fly at dawn and the green pavilion is seen at dusk. According to王勃/Wang Bo, Xu’s interpretation is wrong. “云霞Clouds 翠轩green pavilion” should be a single event happened at dawn. Moreover, since there were rain, breeze, and mist at dusk, the green pavilion was hard to be seen. Cyril Birch, another translator of The Peony Pavilion, interpreted “朝飞暮卷/云霞翠轩/雨丝风片/烟波画船” as “Streaking the dawn, close-curled at dusk,/ rosy clouds frame emerald pavilion;/ fine threads of rain, petals borne on breeze,/ gilded pleasure boat in waves of mist” (Birch, 2002). Birch thought “rosy clouds close-curled at dusk and there was rain”, which is illogical. If there is rain, the clouds should be dark rather than rosy. Because she translated lines individually, she thought it was the clouds that streaked at dawn and close-curled at dusk. However, it should be “the breeze rolls up the silk like rain at dusk” rather than “the clouds curled at dusk”. The lines “朝飞暮卷/云霞翠轩/雨丝风片/烟波画船” should, instead, be interpreted as a whole. According to natural law, rain comes after clouds. Based on 王勃/Wang Bo and natural law, it should be “at dawn, clouds fly through the green fane. In the dusk, after clouds, rain comes. Breeze at dusk rolls up the silk-like rain.” The final line, “烟波mist and wave画船painted boat”, should be understood as happening at dusk since mist was caused by the water vapor of the rain and the breeze. Obviously, the author addressed a sequence of major events that happened from dawn to dusk. The major events happening at dusk would be the breeze and silk-like rain rather than clouds (which would be seen at dawn). It should not be “the clouds close-curled at dusk” as Birch interpreted before. “暮卷at dusk roll up” should be interpreted as “the breeze rolls up the silk like rain at dusk.” But the translation “the breeze rolls up the silk like rain at dusk” has so many syllables to fit in the rhythm. Therefore, I revised it as “Gloam breeze spools rain”. The final translation of “朝飞暮卷/云霞翠轩/雨丝风片/烟波画船” is “Clouds fly at dawn/ through the green fane./ Gloam breeze spools rain./ Haze hued sampan.”