Preface ( A Selection From Top 500 Poems In English)
In the beginning of August, 2015, I received a copy of the Vietnam At War by the former Chinese Vietnamese writer, Mr. Pan Zhou, and later it turned out to be the connection for me to know about Mr. Xie Zhenyu, a senior Chinese writer and poet in Vietnam. One day last summer, while I searched in the Internet, looking for historical information about my parents'
hometown, also my birth place----Vietnam, I surprisingly found the book, War At Vietnam by Mr. Pan, which later on impressed me a lot. So before I received his book I could not wait to read his other works published inWorldjournal.com and his blog where I read his stories such as Rambutan and A Mixed Race Child and some prose and poems.
Mr. Pan then introduced me to "Huang Yingquan Writing Workshop" on Facebook. This is a great writing workshop with members from all over the world, and most of them are Chinese originally from Vietnam, who are good at writing prose, novels, poetry and calligraphy and so on. One of the members I met there is Mr. Xie Zhenyu, who now is living in Vietnam. Talking with Mr. Xie is a pleasant thing to do. Mr. Xie is an accomplished writer, very knowledgeable, and has a good sense of humor. I am impressed by his witty and humorous writings, his great personality, personal charisma and accomplishment in translation.
I started to write and translate in 2013. I focused on poetry from ancient times and works by contemporary poets, modern novels, classic essays, jokes, lyrics etc., between Chinese and English. Most of the time I write poems in both English and Chinese. My two translation works, The Dancing Lady On The Street by Zeng Minglu, a Chinese writer from the States, and Talking About Finland by Tangfu, a Chinese writer from Finland were published in Guwahatian, an overseas Electronic journal: http://guwahatian.guwahaticity.in/Vol2_Issue
9/talesofmind_article2.php http://guwahatian.guwahaticity.in/Vo
l2_Issue9/insidebox_article1.php Mr. Xie suggested that I should translate famous English poems into Chinese, so I began to put my heart into working on this book from mid-September, 2015. I searched poems from http://www.poemhunter.com, and selected 100 pieces by 21 renowned poets as original translation materials for this book. I had previously translated some of those poems. Poets in this book include: Maya Angelou, Margaret Atwood, William Blake, George Gordon Byron, Leonard Cohen, Emily Dickson, Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Ted Kooser, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Kenn Nesbitt, Ezra Pound, Edgar Allan Poe, Jack Prelutsky, John McCrae, Carl Sandburg, Wallace Stevens, Shel Silverstein, Sara Teasdale, Walt Whiteman, and William Butler Yeats.
Contents of these poems include views of love, philosophy of life, aspirations, tracing back one's own history, good wishes for peace, love of American rural life, and campus humor, such as Love Is Not All by Edna St. Vincent Millay, Young Sea by Carl Sandburg, The Negro Speaks of Rivers by Langston Hughes, The Pasture by Robert Frost, In Flanders Fields by John McCrae, and My Teacher Ate My Homework by Kenn Nesbitt's and so on.
Readers will learn western views of love and philosophy of life, experience the American rural life, and at the same time, will enjoy the campus humor by bursting into laughter when reading those children's poems. In this book, I selected two to ten poems for each poet for the translation, all are accompanied by the author's bilingual introduction. I did my best to be accurate, vivid and natural when translating the meaning, beauty and the rhyme of each poem into Chinese, trying to lead the reader into the unprecedented western literary world, to explore the charm of English language and western culture.
During the process of translating this book, I received suggestions from Mr. Xu Yingcai, a professor from the States. Professor Xu' books include: A Selection From the Eight Great Prose Masters of The Tang And Song Dynasties, Selected Works Of Contemporary Chinese Prose, and The translation of Chinese Classical Prose. In September, 2015, A Selection From the Eight Great Prose Masters of The Tang And Song Dynasties and Selected Works Of Contemporary Chinese Prose were given to Lincoln High School by the President of the People's Republic of China, Mr. Xi Jinping, as gifts for learning translation, Chinese culture and language, they are also designated materials for students in China to take the entrance exam of the post-graduate study ofclassical literature translation. I have been influenced and inspired by the translation principles promoted by Mr. Xu, which are: accuracy, vividness and naturalness. I am grateful for the invitation from Mr. Xie and the opportunity of working together with him. I appreciate his attitude of helping and encouraging younger people to contribute into the translation field. Nevertheless, due to time limits, please accept my sincerest apologies for any mistakes I may make in this book, and I thank you in advance for your time!
Liu Xiaoman Jan. 16, 2016
在翻譯過程中我獲得美國徐英才老師的一些建議幫助，特此致謝。 徐英才老師是前複旦大學的英語教師，他的著作【英譯唐宋八大家散文精選】和【英譯中國經典散文選】是中國國家主席習近平先生在2015年9月份訪美期間贈送給美國林肯中學圖書館的外文教材，【英譯唐宋八大家散文精選】也是國內高校的古典文學翻譯研究生入學考試指定讀物。 我追求的是徐英才老師提倡的準確、傳神、渾然的三個翻譯原則。 感謝謝振煜先生的邀請和合作，感謝他提攜晚輩不遺餘力, 對後進的支持和鼓勵的態度。 本書翻譯因為時間匆促，如有錯漏的地方，希望讀者能諒解、指正。
劉小曼
數年前的一天我和我的加拿大朋友聊天。 我問她是否喜歡詩。 她說她小說看不少，但對詩真的不感冒。 然後說她喜歡一些傳統的兒歌，搖籃曲和一些打油詩。
然後她教我以下這首著名的兩行詩，而我視這個為我重要的詩歌學習經曆，是我詩歌學習和寫作生涯的啟蒙。 根據我的朋友，這詩是這樣子的：
Here I sit broken hearted,
Spent a penny and only farted.
Nov. 20，2015
My Profound Enlightenment of Poetry
One day a few years ago I chatted with one of my Canadian friends. I asked her if she was interested in poems. She said that she had read many novels and stories, but poems indeed are not her cup of tea. Anyway she then told me that she likes some traditional nursery rhymes and lullabies and some limericks as well.
She then taught me the following well-known two lined poem which I believe to be my significant poetry learning experience, my profound enlightenment education in my English poetry learning/ writing life. Based on my friend, they go like this:
"Here I sit broken hearted,
spent a penny and only farted. "
Just like many places around the world today, decades ago in Canada you needed to pay to use a public toilet. Ever since, I started to become very interested in English poems.
Nov. 20，2015
Liu Xiaoman
Crying for attention:
Looking forward to publishing my translated novel The Ghost, written by Xuxu. 【鬼戀】英文版尋求出版。謝謝各位觀眾留意！
徐訏(1908—1980.10．5) ，浙江慈溪人。1933年北大哲學係畢業，轉該校心理學係讀研究生。北大讀書時發表短篇小說《煙圈》。1934年在上海任《人間世》月刊編輯。1936年發表了短篇小說《郭慶記》。1936年赴法國巴黎大學修哲學，獲博十學位。
抗戰爆發後回國，居上海。先後任《天地人》、《作風》等刊物主編。1937年發表的短篇小說《鬼戀》，是作者的成名作。1942年赴重慶執教於中央大學。1944 年出版長篇小說《風蕭蕭》。1948年出版《進香集》等5部詩集，總稱《四十詩綜》，收1932年以來的詩作。
1950年赴香港，以寫作為生，曾與曹聚仁等創辦創墾出版社，合辦《熱風》半月刊。1960年出版描寫抗戰時期中國社會百態的長篇《江湖行》。1966年起先後任中文大學教授，香港浸會學院文學院院長兼中文係主任。
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