This Japanese translation poem was first translated into English by Ernest narros, an oriental scholar and poet. In addition to this Tang poem, Buddha Naros translated many other China poems, but he died before he finished his work. Pound, on the other hand, started with the English translation manuscript left by Buddha Naros, and according to his own understanding and comprehension of China's poems, he made artistic processing and published his own translation of Guotai. The Wife of a River Merchant: A Letter is the most famous one in China.
Although many images in China's original poems are difficult to translate, Pound's translation should be influenced by Japanese translation because many of them are misunderstood. For example, the original meaning of "bed" in "Come trotting around and throwing green plums" is "guardrail by the well", but it has been translated into "seat", and the allusion of "I will wait for you in my post even until I die" has simply been directly translated into "forever, forever, forever", and the original meaning of "when" in the morning and evening has also been misinterpreted as "if" and so on.
Robert Frost, a romantic poet, once said that "poetry is something lost in translation". In a word, poetry cannot be translated. This sentence may be too arbitrary, but it shows the difficulty of poetry translation. However, it is even more difficult to translate a Japanese version of a Chinese poem into English to achieve loyalty and elegance. Because Pound, who doesn't know Chinese, can only understand the original poem according to other people's translation, and will inevitably re-create it in the process of translation, it is understandable that the meaning deviates.
It is worth mentioning that no matter whether this translated poem fully expresses the meaning and moral of the original poem, I have heard several foreign friends talk about this poem and they are full of praise. Now, it doesn't matter what the poem "as if" means. Many people think that Pound's greatness lies in that he let the west begin to understand the beauty of China's poems.
However, at the beginning of the 20th century, when the West generally lacked understanding of the East, such a Tang poem with China classical culture was translated into English by an American. Can it really let the West know about China? Since Pound doesn't know Chinese, is he showing China culture or understanding China culture according to western concepts? Is the oriental culture he conveys really "oriental culture"?
I can't help but think of edward said in his book Orientalism, "Oriental is almost an invention of a European". The so-called oriental culture is just the "other" in the eyes of westerners. Westerners take themselves as the main body, create their own ideal oriental culture, interpret oriental texts with western ethical concepts and ways of thinking, and deviate from historical background and national characteristics, thus intentionally or unintentionally causing misunderstandings about oriental culture. In the history of literature, Pound's translation is undoubtedly of great significance. However, from the perspective of the spread of national culture, I am afraid that the advantages of such translated poems outweigh the disadvantages. Think about how many misunderstandings about the East in the West have a long history and how many prejudices are hard to get rid of.
I think, for a country, to let its own culture go abroad is not to use translation and promotion, but to make itself strong and let foreigners learn our language actively. Only by knowing our language can we understand our culture.