Yi Feng
on translating Li Yuansheng
This poem shows the fast pace of personal and national development in China at the end of the twentieth century. It also reflects the Confucian idea of Zhong Yong (中庸), the doctrine of the mean, and shows the cultural, political, and social significance of Confucianism. When translating this poem, I changed the part of speech of some words in the original poem. For example, in the first line, the original Chinese poem used an adjective “fast-walking” (走得太快的) to describe “the man,” but in my translation, I changed it into a verbal phrase “walk too fast” and put it in an attributive clause to describe the fast walking action of this man. Also, the direct translations of the last two lines are “Fortunately in general / he always sits near himself.” I omitted “in general” to make the English sentence flow better, and used “not too far from” rather than “near” to indicate that moderation is crucial in Zhong Yong (中庸).
about the author
Li Yuansheng was born in Wusheng County, Sichuan Province, where poetry is deeply rooted in the local culture and life. Li graduated from Chongqing University in 1983. After graduation, he worked as the general editor for the Chongqing Daily. In 2015, Li worked for the Chongqing Writers Association and became a professional poet and writer at the Chongqing Academy of Literature.
Li began writing poems when he was still in university. He is now the vice chairman of the Chongqing Writers Association and a member of the poetry committee of the China Writers Association. He has published four poetry collections, all of them in Chinese. He has been awarded the People Literature Prize. In 2014, Li was awarded China’s most prestigious Lu Xun Literature Prize for his poetry collection Endless Things.
about the translator
Yi Feng is a scholar, translator and associate professor at Northeastern University, China. She was a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania in 2016. Since then, she has published poems. Her English poems were published in The Penn Review, and her Chinese poems were published in Lotus (芙蓉). Her translation of 12 poems by Charles Bernstein was published by Poetry Monthly (诗歌月刊). She published many academic papers on modern American novels and contemporary American poetry. She was awarded the Hunt Scholarship in 2016. She also won the Bronze Prize with her poem “Future Is Several Songs Written by Poetry” in the International Chinese Poetry Competition in 2017.
