Photo by Steve McCurry https://talentedreader.blogspot.com/
“Nineteen ways of Looking at Wang Wei”…
This piece by Wang Wei is a collection of other poets trying their best to translate the Chinese poem in their own language while trying to capture every image that the original poem included. One of the poets that had translated Wang Wei’s poem was Octavio Paz. Paz had re-named it “En la Ermita del Parque de los Venados” meaning “In the Deer Park Hermitage”. In Octavio’s explanation he describes that because of the different characteristics that Chinese poetry have to their religion it may impose somewhat of a struggle to writers when trying to translate.
In my opinion regionalism plays a huge role in literature because just like translating you’re going to want to capture the correct language that will be used in your poem but also, the correct images that the original author tried to make the reader see. Both Spanish and English have a lot more syllables than Chinese so the poems translated from the original will have twice as much (or more) syllabus than the first one. A writer needs to become familiar with what he/she is writing because then the message won’t come through. Just like in Octavio’s Paz he had to familiarize himself Zen Buddhism before translating. Because most Chinese poetry is heavily concentrated on Buddhist nature therefore, Paz needed to really learn his way around the culture and how he could collaborate the Chinese tradition into his own translation. Ocatvio Paz had to reach out to other scholars to get a sense of the language and the Chinese culture so Paz’s audience have a better understanding of not only the original poem but the overall meaning.
Lastly language! I love Octavio’s approach to this poem because he finds other ways to translate when the poem in Spanish doesn’t sound like it’ll flow. I fluently speak, read, and write in Spanish and some of the translations that Octavio Paz made were beautiful. For example, in the last line originally is written as moss however in Spanish its translated as musgo. He however, chooses to write it as yerba which is grass.
I overall enjoyed Octavio’s translation and use of language because he didn’t let regionalism in this piece of literature hinder his translation. Paz makes sure that his poem as accurate as the original.
Literary Genres in Translation 