snowynight: colourful musical note (Default)
[personal profile] snowynight
Tang Dynasty women poem is made by a Chinese music group Mo Ming Qi Miao (墨明棋妙). These are all well known princesses and beauties in Tang Dynasty, China. Most of them languished in the sorrow of love. The bad translation is done by me.
video )
lyric )
lnhammer: the Chinese character for poetry, red on white background (Default)
[personal profile] lnhammer
Historical background: late in the 40-odd year riegn of Tang Emperor Xuanzong, a Turkish-born general named An Lushan became a favorite of both the emperor and his beautiful concubine, Yang Guifei. As the result of political in-fighting with her cousin, the chancellor, An Lushan revolted in 755 and the next year captured the capital of Chang'an (in modern Shaanxi province). As the emperor fled over mountains to Sichuan, his guardsmen blamed the Yang family for the uprising and forced him to have Yang Guifei executed.

Needless to say, this is a Highly Romantic (and romaticized) event.

In 806, Bai Juyi wrote this poem about the affair. The translation below by Witter Bynner (1929) calls it "A Song of Unending Sorrow," but is more commonly known in English as "Song of Everlasting Regret."


China's Emperor, craving beauty that might shake an empire,
Was on the throne for many years, searching, never finding,
Till a little child of the Yang clan, hardly even grown,
Bred in an inner chamber, with no one knowing her,
But with graces granted by heaven and not to be concealed,
At last one day was chosen for the imperial household.
If she but turned her head and smiled, there were cast a hundred spells,
And the powder and paint of the Six Palaces faded into nothing.
...It was early spring. They bathed her in the FlowerPure Pool,
Which warmed and smoothed the creamy-tinted crystal of her skin,
And, because of her languor, a maid was lifting her
When first the Emperor noticed her and chose her for his bride.
The cloud of her hair, petal of her cheek, gold ripples of her crown when she moved,
Were sheltered on spring evenings by warm hibiscus curtains;
But nights of spring were short and the sun arose too soon,
And the Emperor, from that time forth, forsook his early hearings
And lavished all his time on her with feasts and revelry,
His mistress of the spring, his despot of the night.
There were other ladies in his court, three thousand of rare beauty,
But his favours to three thousand were concentered in one body.
By the time she was dressed in her Golden Chamber, it would be almost evening;
And when tables were cleared in the Tower of Jade, she would loiter, slow with wine.
Her sisters and her brothers all were given titles;
And, because she so illumined and glorified her clan,
She brought to every father, every mother through the empire,
Happiness when a girl was born rather than a boy.
...High rose Li Palace, entering blue clouds,
And far and wide the breezes carried magical notes
Of soft song and slow dance, of string and bamboo music.
The Emperor's eyes could never gaze on her enough--
Till war-drums, booming from Yuyang, shocked the whole earth )

Chinese text )

See also this line-by-line prose version from Wikimedia. Wengdu has a version with automatic dictionary lookups of the modern meaning of each character.

---L.
snowynight: colourful musical note (Default)
[personal profile] snowynight
crossposted to [community profile] poetry
Chen Qiuyu (鄭愁予) is a famous modern Taiwan poet noted for his use of tradition Chinese images..

錯誤 (鄭愁予)

我 打 江 南 走 過
那 等 在 季 節 裏 的 容 顏 如 蓮 花 的 開 落
東 風 不 來 , 三 月 的 柳 絮 不 飛
你 底 心 如 小 小 寂 寞 的 城
恰 若 青 石 的 街 道 向 晚
音 不 響 , 三 月 的 春 帷 不 揭
你 底 心 是 小 小 的 窗 扉 緊 掩

我 達 達 的 馬 蹄 是 美 麗 的 錯 誤
我 不 是 歸 人 , 是 個 過 客 …

Mistake by Chen qiu yu

I come from Jiang Nan, The face that waits in the season bosoms and falls like the water lily.
The East wind doesn't come, March's willow leaves don't fly
Your heart is like a lonely little town
The stone-pave street at night
Don't come The foot steps , March's Spring curtain doesn't unveil
Your heart's like little window shut close.

The tapping sound of my horse is a beautiful mistake.
I am not the one to stay. I only pass by.



snowynight: colourful musical note (Default)
[personal profile] snowynight
禁色 was a Cantonese song sung by an Hong Kong indie band 達明一派 in 1980's, and it was believed to be about asking for a more open attitude about homosexuality, back when its decriminalization was a hot topic in 1980's in Hong Kong. The video I chose is a cover by a local singer 何韻詩。

The video:
cut for the video )

Lyric in Traditional Chinese

Lyric in Traditional Chinese )

Transliteration in pin yin

Transliteration in pin yin )

My own translation

My translation )
snowynight: colourful musical note (Default)
[personal profile] snowynight
I've been posting my own translation of various modern Chinese poems in this tag for the April Poetry Month. Come take a look. Constructive criticism is welcomed.

For more legitimacy, here is the poem for today:
Original Text:
Original text in Simplified Chinese )

Transliteration in pinyin: Transliteration in pinyin )

My translation:
My translation )
troisroyaumes: Painting of a duck, with the hanzi for "summer" in the top left (Default)
[personal profile] troisroyaumes
My personal translation project right now is to translate 숙향전 (淑香傳), or Tale of Sukhyang, and I'm currently up to part 12 of the first volume:

volume 1, parts 1-3
volume 1, parts 4-6
volume 1, parts 7-9
volume 1, part 10
volume 1, parts 11-12

I will post more links as I progress further into the story!
troisroyaumes: Painting of a duck, with the hanzi for "summer" in the top left (Default)
[personal profile] troisroyaumes
I just posted an English translation of a pre-modern Korean essay written by a woman during the late Joseon period in my journal, and I thought I'd link here, in case anyone is interested:

조침문 (弔針文), or Elegy for a Needle
delfinnium: (Default)
[personal profile] delfinnium
One of the songs I'm listening to now:


Love of a lifetime )




你是我胸口永远的痛 - You are my eternal chest pain! (XD XD)



Lyrics, literal translation, and less literal translation here! )

Syndicate

RSS Atom

November 2018

S M T W T F S
    123
45678910
111213141516 17
18192021222324
252627282930 

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jun. 12th, 2025 03:03 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios