[New-Poetry] Bai Juyi

[Jim Gourley]

Indeed, David, it's Bai Juyi in pinyin, the Romanized system that was
introduced a half-century ago. The earlier Romanized system was the
Wade-Giles which would have represented Bai Juyi as Pai Chui (umlaut over
the 'u'). For those interested in having a look at some interesting sites
that have rollover definitions of individual characters, which are helpful
in seeing how truly awful some of the available translations are, have a
look at http://www.afpc.asso.fr/wengu/ a wonderful French site with the
Chinese Classics written in traditional characters with the rollover defs in
Enlgish. The translations are in both French and English. The translations
of the classic 300 Tang Poems in which the Bai Juyi appears are by Witter
Bynner. I am not a fan. 

 

Another site is http://www.chinese-poems.com/. The format is different. Each
poem is presented in quarters, upper left, the characters; upper right,
pinyin with tonal markings; the bottom left, the word-for-character
translation; and the lower right, the translations, which, for the most
part, are 'not good'.

 

Of the two, the French site is by far the most informative. And fun.

 

--Jim Gourley, a lurker

 

________

http://www.rudenoon.com <http://www.rudenoon.com/> 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rudenoon

 

 

 

  _____  

From: new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu
[mailto:new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu] On Behalf Of David Graham
Sent: Friday, November 16, 2007 1:21 AM
To: NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views
Subject: [New-Poetry] From the Other World: Poems in Memory of James Wright

 

You may well be right about Wright reading Pound's *Cathay*--I think he read
about everything, and had most of it memorized.  But the poem below quotes
the Arthur Waley translation of Po Chu-I (aka Bai Ju-Yi, I believe).

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