Translation Review - The University of Texas at Dallas

Songs:
A line consists regularly of four characters or
monosyllabic words, often strong words, and
pregnant with meaning in their collocation,
defying equally terse translation….A great
peculiarity is that almost every line is a sentence
in itself, which is a source of great
comfort amid all the difficulties that beset the
translator at every turn….A remarkable peculiarity
of style is this, that while in an English
ballad we often find a refrain or chorus at the
end of the verse, in Chinese there is something
corresponding to that in the beginning—some
allusion to natural objects, bearing
figuratively upon the subject, and repeated
perhaps with variations in most of the succeeding
verses. 3
In his introduction, Jennings also comments on
the shortcomings of his predecessor’s metrical version:
It seems to be the general opinion, that in the
metrical version which followed, in which he
availed himself of coadjutors (not sinologists)
in England and elsewhere, he has been far
from equaling himself. In that version has
been adopted the plan of making many difficult
pieces intelligible by introducing into
them (contrary to his expressed aim) phrases,
and often several whole lines of explanatory
matter which properly should be relegated to
footnotes. 4
Jennings sought to produce a verse translation
more faithful to the original in terms of form and
content than Legge’s. In other words, he wished to
adhere to the scholarly and philological accuracy of
a prose text while producing a verse translation. As
a result, he does not add the explanatory padding
that we saw in Legge, and he is often a bit more
terse than Legge. Jennings’ translation:
Song of Farmers Driven Forth by Extortion
O monster rats! O monster rats!
Eat not our millets, we implore.
Three years we’ve borne with you,
And still our presence you ignore.
Now we abandon you,
And to yon pleasant lands repair.
O pleasant lands! O pleasant lands!
A refuge have we surely there.
O monster rats! O monster rats!
Devour not all our crops of wheat.
Three years we’ve borne with you,
Still with no mercy do we meet.
Now we abandon you,
And take to yon glad Land our flight.
O gladsome Land! O gladsome Land!
There justice shall we have, and right.
O monster rats! O monster rats!
Devour not all our springing grain.
Three years we’ve borne with you,
Nor heed you still our toil and pain.
Now we abandon you
For brighter plains that yonder lie.
O brighter plains! O brighter plains!
Whose, then, will be the constant cry? 5
First of all, it should be noted that Jennings adds
titles to his translations, something lacking in the
original. (The poems are often referred to by the single
most important image in the poem.) He also
appends some explanatory notes to his translation.
In the first, he informs the reader that the word
“monster” means “huge” and that “the State officials
had grown fat on their extortion, and were no
less troublesome than rats.” And the “brighter
plains” in the third stanza he says means “borders,
frontiers.” Unlike Legge, Jennings has seen fit to
relegate his explanations to footnotes. However, by
maintaining a little bit of the terseness of the original,
albeit within a late-Victorian translation, he has
also created new problems. For example, he renders
the fourth line of the first stanza as: “And still our
presence you ignore.” Although it can be argued that
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