Some translations of Gidemaga's poems
I am the history written in Yi language in this land.
It's the child of a woman who keeps cutting the umbilical cord.
My painful name
My beautiful name
I want this name.
……
Ah, world, please listen to me.
I am alone.
In this "self-portrait", Ji Demaga used parallelism, echo and lyricism to create an image of a Yi poet who grew up in Liangshan. He connected the ancient tradition with foreign civilization in Chinese, and produced a poetic expression combining nationality and modernity in concise language, thus building a bridge between Chinese and foreign poetry.
Civilization develops through mutual learning. Gidemaga has mentioned many times: "Poetry is the bond between our souls." What are the special functions of poetry in promoting the exchange and mutual learning of human civilization? Recently, our reporter made an exclusive interview with Gidemaga.
Q: Your poems have been translated into more than 40 languages, and more than 100 versions of translated poems have been published in dozens of countries. What aspects of your poems do you think touched foreign readers?
A: Foreign readers can see my poems mainly because of the in-depth international cultural exchanges in China in the past 20 years. At this point, we are luckier than the writers of the May 4th generation and have more opportunities to participate in international cultural exchanges than the writers before the reform and opening up. My personal situation is that I have translated poems in all major languages in the world, including Czech, Irish, Scottish, Hebrew and Swahili. Some of them are directly translated from Chinese, while others are translated from English, French, Russian and Spanish. Some of these translators are sinologists, and many of them are excellent foreign poets. In my communication with these translators, I found that they are interested in poems that can make them sing. The voice in my poems is not only mine, but also the voice of a group, with praise for life, reverence for nature and sincere talk from the bottom of my heart. Although I believe that poetry has some untranslatable characteristics, it can convey the same feelings and values of human beings. As a poet of this era, my deepest feeling is that I am the most direct beneficiary of communication and translation.
Q: I heard that some foreign poets have had an important influence on your creation? What do you think is the significance of translation between Chinese and foreign literature?
A: Many foreign poets have influenced me. When I first started writing poetry, I was deeply influenced by African-American poets and African-American poets, including MacKay, langston hughes, senghor, Aimee sezer, and later by Latin American poets such as pablo neruda, Nicola Geelan, Octavio Paz and cesar Vallejo. Of course, the Spanish "1998 generation" and the "27th generation" represented by Federico Garcí a lorca also had a great influence on me. The poems of the Silver Age in Russia and the modern and contemporary poems of the United States and European countries are also extremely important references for my writing. The most important achievement of literary translation, especially poetry translation, is that we can learn the overall style of world poetry. In the process of learning and learning from each other, our creation can not only highlight our own advantages, but also create new ones in form and rhetoric. It can be said that the communication between contemporary China poetry and world poetry is an equal dialogue.
Q: Your long poem "A Divided Planet-Dedicated to All Mankind and All Life" shows concern for the fate of all mankind and continuous thinking on topics such as war and peace, politics and philosophy, religion and civilization, which has aroused wide repercussions. Can you talk about the background and theme of this poem?
A: I wrote this poem in April 2020. As we all know, the epidemic has profoundly changed the world, and we can't escape it, but we can choose the right way to face it-that is, to unite closely and regard the earth as our common home. Man's life is short, but when we look at this planet in the vast universe, its life may be limited. All the animals and plants carried by this planet are part of it. There is no reason why we should not be kind to them and confront them. The end of this poem expresses my best expectation for the world and mankind: "Yes! No matter what will happen, I will firmly believe that-/the sun will rise tomorrow, the dawn will still be like/my lover's eyes/warm wind will blow over the abdomen of the earth, my mother and children will still play there/the blue of the sea will rise with my dreams and become the love nest of midnight/stars ... "
Poets are the sons of human civilization and the witnesses of the times. It is impossible for a poet to become an invisible person in reality, let alone to turn himself into a bystander beyond the transcendent. Although social writing is a responsibility of the poet, it is more important that the identity of the poet requires him not to choose silence in the face of major events.
Q: What special role do you think poetry plays in promoting mutual understanding and resonance between people of different civilizations and nationalities?
A: The Venezuelan poet Eugenio Montejo once wrote in his poem: "The rotation of the earth brings us closer/it rotates between you and me/until we meet in this dream/as the article" Drinking "said/How many nights have passed/it snowed/the winter of the sun has passed/time has passed/minutes have passed/it seems that a thousand years have passed." The ideas expressed by the poet are consistent with the spirit of "people and my compatriots, things and things" of the ancients in China. Great human civilizations are very tolerant. Poetry is a deep psychological communication between nations and hearts. Yi people have a proverb: Poetry is the salt in language. Salt is precious to human beings, and poetry is also the essence of national language. In fact, poetry, music and painting are the most basic and fundamental things to express human spirit and emotion, and they are the peak of human spirit.
Today's world is a highly complex one, and the fate of mankind is linked together as never before. If politics, economy and science and technology are the prerequisites for connecting the world, then literature is the link connecting our souls. Even mountains and seas can't bring people with similar interests closer. Literary exchange can be a "booster" to enhance friendship and mutual trust between countries, and it can also be a "shock absorber" to deal with bilateral friction.
Q: Many of your works are well known to overseas readers, which depends on the efforts of translators. How do you think to promote the translation of Chinese and foreign literature in promoting the exchange of Chinese and foreign poetry and humanities?
A: I can't imagine what the world would be like without translation. To be sure, the translation of literary classics between different nationalities, or the translation between cultures in a larger scope, has influenced the progress of our own ancient civilization, and at the same time provided many possibilities for different civilizations to learn from each other. /kloc-Luis Vaz de Camons, a Portuguese poet who lived in Macau, China in the 6th century, is an epoch-making figure in the history of East-West communication. It is said that most of his more than 8,000 lines of epic "Song of Lugitania" and a large number of sonnets praising love were completed while living in Macao. It is not difficult to guess that the realistic East has brought him excitement and inspiration. Anyone familiar with the history of modern western poetry also knows a legend in the history of translation, that is, if Pound, a poet and literary critic, had not translated China's Tang poems and Japanese haiku into English, there would have been no unique oriental image in rhetoric and artistic conception presented by Imagism poetry and later symbolism poetry. It cannot be said that translation and communication have brought unexpected effects to poetry.
There is no shortcut to realize the high-level translation of Chinese and foreign literature, but we can continue to carry out in-depth literary dialogue and exchanges to enhance mutual understanding. Translating poetry is more difficult than translating other literary categories. My experience is that good translation is often done by poets in the host country, or mainly by poets, which is the most effective translation. Most of my poems in foreign languages have proved this point. As a poet, you still need to find a competent translator you trust to complete the translation work.