The Tang Poetry Regained: Teaching Tang Poems with Hu Pin-ching`s and Xu Yuanzhong`s English Translations as a Contrast and Complement

Abstract

義大利格言「翻譯，即背叛」(＂Traduttore, traditore＂) 深獲法蘭西共鳴──「翻譯，背叛之謂也」(＂Traduire, c`est trahir＂)。美國詩人佛洛斯特以為：「所謂詩者，一經翻譯便失其味。」佛氏此說，與台灣詩人余光中之翻譯觀，可謂異曲同工。余氏以為：「翻譯，猶如政治與婚姻， 乃一門妥協的藝術;此說對譯詩而言，尤為貼切。」若翻譯難免於文化、語言、美學等層面必有所喪，則文學翻譯不啻譯者逃所難逃之原罪。如此，唐詩教師如何對外籍學生傳達華夏傳統引以為傲之文苑勝境?本文作者嘗試以許淵沖與胡品清之英文譯本，互補參照進行對外唐詩教學，以期呈現原詩多彩之風貌。許淵冲先生與胡品清女士兩者皆畢業於中國著名大學之英文系，兩者皆負笈法蘭西，遠赴巴黎大學攻讀西洋語文學，兩者皆學成歸國，分別成為海峽兩岸國寶級精通中、英、法三國語言與文學之學術重鎮，雙雙成為中華文化於地球村之親善大使、中華文學於世界文壇孜孜不倦之擺渡人。然而，許、胡二氏之唐詩譯論可謂大異其趣:許氏認為唐詩英譯必須講究押韻，以求再現原詩「形、音、義」三美;胡氏則以為押韻之圭臬，徒增譯者無形之枷鎖。蓋兩氏譯詩，雖各擅勝場，卻恐皆難免有其失真之處、摸象之窘，故試以兩家之英文譯作，與原詩對照、分析、比較，進行對外漢語教學，以收互濟之效與相輔之功。

The Italian proverb ＂Traduttore, traditore＂ finds its echo in French: ＂Traduire, c`est trahir.＂ Robert Frost, an American poet, holds that ＂Poetry is that which gets lost in translation,＂ which is, again, echoed in the perspective on translation embraced by Kwang-Chung Yu, a poet of Taiwan, who firmly believes that ＂translation, like politics and marriage, is an art of compromise, which applies to literature, especially to poetry.＂ If the inevitable loss — be it cultural, linguistic or aesthetic — in translation proves an ＂original sin＂ for the translators of such a literary genre, how should a teacher of the Chinese Tang poetry do to fully convey the original richness of such a literary heritage boasted by the Chinese people? The author of this paper proposes a solution for such a dilemma, that is, simultaneously provide foreign students with two English versions by Xu Yuanzhong (許淵冲) and Hu Pin-ching (胡品清) along with the original Tang poems to serve as a contrast and complement. As English majors, both Xu Yuanzhong and Hu Pin-ching graduated from renowned universities in China, both studied abroad in France to further their western languages proficiency and broaden their horizon of literatures at the University of Paris, both came back to their native land with admirable learning, both became national academic rarities conversant with Chinese, English as well as French languages and literatures on the two sides across the Taiwan Strait, and both serve not only as good will ambassador of the Chinese culture in the global village but also as most devoted scholars who ferry with pride and pleasure the Chinese literature beyond the endless oceans. However, a fundamental theoretical disparity lies between the two translators in regard to the way they render the poetic charms of the Tang dynasty: the former insists on the indispensability of rhyming in translating the Tang poetry so as to make intelligible its ＂musical, semantic, and formal beauties,＂ whereas the latter, regarding rhyming in rendering the Tang poetry as something unbeneficial, chooses instead to transplant the Tang poetry in blank verse style. Since each translator, in spite of respective favorable performance in certain aesthetic dimensions, seems doomed to ＂lose＂ some elements in his/her translation, it is therefore advantageous to foreign students to read the two translations in parallel of a Tang poem, which altogether contributes to forming a contrast and complement that helps them further probe into the original ambiance and profundity of the Tang poetry, for they are thus endowed with a chance to benefit from the merits as well as virtues of both translators.