Talk about poetry translation techniques from a short poem by Rabindranath Tagore

Tagore's short poem "The Birds" is a household name. Mr. Zheng Renduo had translated and published it in his early years, but it was not satisfactory. First, the translation does not look like poetry, and second, there are many mistranslations. Because Mr. Zheng is a celebrity, his translations seem unshakable. Famous writers are reluctant to re-translate for fear of being scolded; juniors dare not re-translate for fear of being slapped.

The original text of No. 306 of "The Birds" is as follows:

Let me not shame thee, Father, who displayest thy glory in thy

children.

The original meaning is, I will not let you down, father, you have done so many glorious things for them.

My old American colleague also wrote an annotation for this: My achievements reflect positively upon you, so I would never do anything to dishonor you.?

"thee" accusative case "thy" your, "displayest"

"display" in ancient poetry means display. ?

Mr. Zheng’s translation is as follows:

Let me not humiliate you, father, you show your glory in your children.

There are several problems in the translation: First, the use of humiliation here is inappropriate, but it does have this meaning in the dictionary. Second, who is the father? Third, there is the issue of rhythm. Let's peel back the cocoon and see how to translate it properly.

The translation of the first sentence is actually a matter of word selection. The real meaning of this sentence is that I will not let you be humiliated and disappointed, so that the next sentence will be logically coherent. "Shame" is too strong a word.

The "Father" in the sentence is capitalized, which obviously does not refer to the father. The Bing dictionary can be found as "Heavenly Father", which is God. "Father" also means priest in English, which is commonly used in Christian churches and hospitals.

To solve the above two problems, my translation is,

I will not let you be ashamed and disappointed

Heavenly Father

Glory and splendor?

This is a question of rhyme. Since it is a poem, it must have rhyme. . The rhyme "Wanghehuang" is used here to make the poem catchy to read and easy to remember. This also reminds me of a famous saying, "A great poet is a master melody", that is, a great poet is also a master of melody.

Some people use simplicity and complexity to measure the quality of poetry, but I think it is not advisable. Just like an article, one word more is too much, and one word less is too little.