BY HEATHER IRVINE
Elizabethan houses and town halls may seem slightly out of place in China. But in 2017, construction began on a replica of a medieval English town in the city of Fuzhou, the capital of the industrial Fujian province. This project hasn’t just been an exercise in creative architecture. It’s been an attempt to reconstruct Stratford-upon-Avon – the home of England’s great bard, William Shakespeare.
While Fuzhou’s ongoing initiative is fairly recent, China’s fascination with Shakespeare runs deep. His plays first made their way to the country in 1856, though in the form of vastly simplified stories that an English clergyman had translated. It wasn’t until 1922 that the first complete translation of a play – Hamlet – was published by playwright and dramatist Tian Han, and it was only in the 1930s that a full translation of all of his plays was produced by scholar Zhu Shenhao.
Shakespeare’s sonnets, however, have fallen on the wayside – even though “they are too good for real life,” according to Beijing-based Shakespeare enthusiast, Sarah Ye. Back in 2016, Ye translated Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets into Chinese in her book《穿越四百年來讀你：莎士比亞十四行詩 • 愛之雋永》 (Traversing 400 Years to Read You: Shakespeare’s Sonnets – Love is Eternal). Now, nearly ten years later, Sarah speaks to NüVoices about connecting with Shakespeare across time and language, the challenges of the translation process, and the surprising similarities between Shakespeare and classical Chinese poets.
Can you remember your first encounter with Shakespeare’s works – either in Chinese or in English?
When I was studying English Language and Literature at university in Beijing, I dealt with some of Shakespeare’s playscripts – but the first time I really paid close attention to Shakespeare came years later, when I was introduced to an English song, “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” by Elvis Presley. I was impressed by the line that goes, “You know someone said that the world’s a stage and each of us must play a part.” I later found out that the “someone” Elvis was referring to was Shakespeare, who wrote about the world being a stage in As You Like It.
You went on to publish a book of Shakespeare’s sonnets in translation. Can you tell us what inspired you to translate Shakespeare’s poetry into Mandarin?
I was in my forties when I started reading and translating Shakespeare’s sonnets. By that time I’d had more experiences and understood love – life – better. Before that, I don’t think I really understood his poetry. As students, we thought Shakespeare was cliché. We were young, we hadn’t hurt, we hadn’t been hurt, so we didn’t understand. Reading Shakespeare’s sonnets when I was older nourished my mind and enriched my life. So I started translating them.
I didn’t speak or read much English in my day to day, but I’d read many Chinese poems and had a feel of what poetry should be like in Chinese words. In the very beginning, I simply posted my translations on WeChat Moments, just to share with people I knew. But my friends loved them! “Those are beautiful words,” they said. Many of my friends don’t read English, so they didn’t know that all those beautiful lines were Shakespeare’s. Even my friends in translation circles didn’t know about Shakespeare’s sonnets – they only knew of his plays.
Are there aspects of Shakespeare’s poetry which correspond particularly well with Chinese language and culture?
Shakespeare is very traditional in style, much like some of the older Chinese poets. When I first read his sonnets, the classical Chinese poets came to mind – the ones who write about being loyal and steadfast especially when it comes to love, but who express those deep feelings in a milder way.
For instance, there’s a poet called Li Shangyin [Tang dynasty, 813–858 AD]. When you read Li’s poems, you feel that he was a very affectionate man, with deep feelings expressed in his lines – and it will remind you of Shakespeare. He shares the same mellow temperament and strong visual sense, often using metaphors – silkworms, candles, east winds, to name a few – for deep human feeling.
How about any parallels with contemporary Chinese literature?
There’s a contemporary poet I know called Yu Xinqiao, and he’s a gifted one – one of the best of China’s active poets today. His poems are very elegant. Once you’ve read them, you feel shaken. So in the process of translation, I would think of him, as well as the classic poets.
Has Shakespeare’s poetry been well-received in China? Why or why not?
His sonnets are not read widely [in China]. I don’t think young people these days will appreciate them because he’s too old-fashioned; very committed, very loyal to his lover. People also don’t like reading poems anymore: these things are too high-spirited, and they just talk about how to make money, how to get a job.
If people talk of Shakespeare, they talk about his plays, which are easier to translate and well-accepted by Chinese readers.But his translated poems haven’t been able to compete with good Chinese poetry – especially since Chinese poetry readers have high standards, tuned to the pitch of China’s own elegant, deeply sensitive, classical works. Against these standards, most of Shakespeare’s sonnet translations are just not worth reading. They don’t have the poetic feeling or the features that are so strong in classical Chinese poetry – like the rhythms, the musicality, the capacity to be recited. For instance, there’s a famous translator from the older generation called Cao Minglun who published a complete translation of Shakespeare’s sonnets in the 1940s. Reading the poems, I never felt a poetic feeling from them.
Shakespeare’s sonnets are masterpieces, but Chinese people don’t read good translations, so they don’t know he’s so great in the respect of poetry. It’s a translation problem.
Can you speak more about the challenges of translating English poetry like Shakespeare’s into Chinese? Are there inherent tensions between the two literary styles?
I can give you an example: Li Shangyin has an untitled poem, beginning ‘It is hard to meet, harder still to part’. Each line has fourteen words, split evenly down the middle; in the first line, the middle and last words rhyme. It has a precise, symmetrical feel, with a concision both refined and rhythmic. In contrast, the translations of Shakespeare’s poems seem dull or lukewarm. But it’s the translators’ issue. They haven’t recreated the sonnets using poetry’s expressive potential.
When translating poetry, you have to think like a poet, even if you aren’t one. It’s about recreation – you have to recreate the sonnet in a Chinese way. Word-to-word translations that transcribe what the sonnet literally says just become very limp. The problem is that most Chinese translators don’t read English or aren’t very good at speaking it, so they can’t produce good translations or veer away from the original meaning.
A good translator of poetry should recreate. They should use their own mother tongue to consider poems, even if they read poems [in other languages]. Previous translators failed to do that with his sonnets, and that is why his sonnets haven’t spread very well in China.
How do you think the process of translation shapes a translator’s relationship to the text, and to artistic creation in general?
Translating is about sensitivity. Translating Shakespeare, in particular, makes you more sensitive to the beautiful things around you. You even get a better understanding of all those beautiful things you read [in your mother tongue]. When I read Shakespeare’s sonnets in English, the lines come to me in Chinese – and it makes me think of Li Shangyin, of all those beautiful verses in Chinese. I think [Shakespeare’s] sonnets deserve better translations that express his lines in a more poetic way.
Lastly, do you have any personal favourites among the sonnets you’ve translated?
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” That’s a very famous line. It has been translated by many translators. And even though Shakespeare’s sonnets are not frequently read in China, this one, by comparison, has more traction in the Chinese mainstream. Yet, of the older generation of translators, this opening line is translated in very quotidian language.
So when I was translating this sonnet and choosing my words, I made so many minute edits and fine-tunings. For example, I translated “summer’s day” as “盛夏 (sheng xia)” – a phrase carrying a more affective, classically poetic feel. You can feel the shape of the sentence emerge, as well as a poetic feeling.
And that’s important because if you get no poetic feeling out of the Chinese translation, then you have no inclination to read the original English. To be inspired to seek out the original you have to feel drawn in and curious about how exactly this great master put his lines together. In my translations, I do this by trying to make the poetry correspond with the classical Chinese style. That’s my understanding of Shakespeare – and I know he is understood in many different ways.
《穿越四百年來讀你：莎士比亞十四行詩 • 愛之雋永》 (“Traversing 400 years to read you: Shakespeare’s Sonnets – Love is Eternal”) was published in 2016 by China Youth Publishing House.
About Sarah Ye
Sarah has published several translated works of English, including fiction and non-fiction, in her leisure hours. In 2016, she published her first translated work of poetry in selected readings of Shakespeare’s sonnets. It’s a collection of twenty essays, each of which contains the original version of the sonnet and two versions of translation: one in the classical Chinese style and the other in contemporary style. By way of essay, Sarah shared her interpretations of Shakespeare’s sonnets. In 2019, she published her second translated work of poetry in selected readings of Emily Dickinson’s poems. This second work is a collection of 80 selected poems presented in original style and translated modern poetry style with short notes to mark the translator’s understanding of the poem. In Sarah’s eyes, this second poetry translation collection is a more mature and satisfying work.
About the writer
Heather Skye Irvine is a writer who is particularly interested in art and literature as objects saturated with the potential for cross-cultural understanding. She was born and raised in Hong Kong and aims to emulate the city’s melding of East and West in her writing. Find out more on her website and LinkedIn.
About the editor
Nicole Fan is an independent journalist and editor based in Singapore. She covers global affairs across culture, business, politics and tech, with a focus on Asia’s role in a shifting world order. Her writing has appeared in The Economist, The Diplomat, Rest of World and other international outlets. She also serves as digital editor of editorial collective NüVoices and founding editor of independent magazine The Primer.
Photo: Heather Skye Irvine