Generally speaking, the English translation of Chinese poems should not only retain the meaning of the original poem, but also make the translation conform to the expression norms of the target language style.
English poetry is also formatted. The most prominent point is that, similar to Chinese poetry, English poetry also pays attention to rhyme. After all, poetry is catchy because of its rhythm.
According to the position of rhyme feet, English poetry has alliteration, ending rhyme and even middle rhyme.
Rhyme and syllable number should be paid attention to in translating Chinese poems into English. Try to be consistent with Chinese poetry in rhyme, syllable number and wording style.
Take Shakespeare's sonnets (18) as an example:
Shakespeare's Sonnets (18)
Can I compare you to summer? Can I compare you to a summer day?
Although you are lovelier and gentler than summer:
The strong wind will make five buds in Moonracer red and fragrant, and the strong wind will shake the lovely buds in May.
Summer days are fleeting; The lease in summer is too short;
Sometimes the eyes of the giant eye in the sky are too hot, and sometimes the eyes of the sky are too bright.
Its golden complexion is often covered; His golden complexion often darkens,
Thousands of fragrant Wan Yan will wither and die, and every beautiful time will pass by.
Deprived of beauty by the change of fate and heaven; Accidental or natural changes without pruning:
But your eternal summer will never end, but your eternal summer will never fade.
The beauty you have will not disappear, nor will you lose the posture of beautiful thoughts.
Death cannot boast that you are wandering in the shadow of death, nor can it boast that you are wandering in the shadow.
When you live forever in immortal poems; When you grow up in eternal lines of poetry,
As long as there are human beings, or people have eyes, as long as people can breathe, or eyes can see,
My poems will spread and give you life. This is eternal, which gives you life.
The basic meter of the whole poem is iambic pentameter, which consists of three quatrains and a couplet, and adopts the typical rhyme of Shakespeare's sonnets, namely ababccdcd efefgg.
In the final rhyme, the temperate zone of the second line rhymes with the date of the fourth line, but the stress positions of the two words are different. This rhyme is neither masculine nor feminine, neither fish nor fowl. Compared with other strict rhymes, this rhyme is quite abrupt and destroys the aesthetic feeling of poetry.
In alliteration, the sixth line and the seventh line both start with alliteration and form alliteration, but these two parallel simple declarative sentences cause the meaning to wander at the same level rather than progress, and the same beginning makes the two sentences drag on not only in meaning but also in form, which destroys the rhyming beauty and formal beauty of poetry.
In metrical form, iambic pentameter poems are often abnormal, especially in the first step of the first line of the poem, where the stress often comes before and the light tone comes after. Proper abnormality can make poetry avoid dullness, increase variation and make its rhyme more beautiful. But too many exceptions will disrupt the format of the poem, make its rhythm appear fragmented, and bring negative influence to the poem, just like this poem. The first line "Can I compare them to summer? The word "you arrive" in the second line "You are cuter and warmer" cannot be pronounced in stress order, so the rhyme of this line is not iambic. In the sixth line, "usually his gold complex darkens", the position of the first two steps is vague. The first step in the tenth line "the beautiful land you own" can be regarded as an anomaly, while the stress and light tone order of "Death doesn't brag" in the eleventh line "You walk in his shadow" should be "heavy and light" rather than iambic.