Lost in Translation

偶然

我是天空里的一片云，
偶尔投影在你的波心——
　你不必惊异，
　更无须欢喜——
在转瞬间消灭了踪影。
　
你我相逢在黑夜的海上，
你有你的，我有我的，方向；
　你记得也好，
　最好你忘掉，
在这交会时互放的光亮。

-- 徐志摩 


I found this poem lying on my desk one morning . While I was in high school, my father still clung on to the hope of imparting me with a stronger interest in and better, if not full, knowledge of Chinese. At this moment in time, let's just say it remains half-baked. Hopefully not for long though!


Regardless, this poem has stuck to me. Maybe because it's so different from the Tang dynasty poems  I was forced to memorize and mumble aloud as a little kid. Or maybe it's because Xu Zhimo was a Chinese kid like me who received a Western education (Warning!: over-simplification to the max. That thought is just what goes on in my silly head. I readily confess our backgrounds are nothing alike. But I can't help the way my simple brain likes me to relate to other people.) He apparently fell in love with Keats and Shelley while he was at Cambridge then returned to China where he led the modern poetry movement. Who knows, maybe I don't even like the poem that much but am just delighted that I can translate it and am frustrated that I haven't seen another translation that is close enough to my own understanding of it. Here goes:



Happenstance


I am a single cloud in the sky,

Occasionally casting my shadow over your tossing heart;

You need not be startled,

Much less to be glad,

The turn of an instant erasing all projected traces.

You and I cross paths on the sea of this opaque night,

You have your,  I have my, direction;

It is well that you remember,

Best that you forget,

During this encounter, the brilliant light we shed.

That took much longer than I thought. Phew. I'm satisfied with it... enough. The meaning of the first stanza's last line seems incomplete though, the major issue being "消灭". I had no way to say it concisely and accurately, and so chose to translate it to "erase" instead. The context that I normally hear that verb used is "消灭證據" which means "to destroy evidence" (said context being triad/under-cover cop movies of course haha.) The "消灭" I understand is one that is much closer to destroying or "obliterating", not merely "erasing." And obliterating in the sense of setting fire to something and watching it burn until it is the same as if it never existed. My Chinese is not up to standard though. So this may just be the personal connotations I read into it? Regardless, I ultimately deemed "obliterating" too forceful of a word for this context. 

Also, the last line of the second stanza. It seems limp. It's not wrong, just limp. Which makes it wrong, I guess, because "互放的光亮" is this brilliant incandescent light that they are both emitting, shining, and just radiating forth. (Think: the Beast from Beauty and the Beast when he is transforming into a man.) However, "shed" won because where "互" means "mutual/both," "放" means "to emit" in this context... but it is also often used to mean "to let go". Hence my choice of "shed."

One more thing, don't even get me started on the title "偶然." I think it took my dad a long time to try to explain it to me. I've forgotten what he said, of course. I've seen it translated as "chance" in other places but that doesn't seem to come even close to what it means. It's this strange mixture of the providential, accidental, and occasional which seems dun-dun-dun-dun-apparently-untranslatable! Ok, so I got myself started... but I'll stop.

Something not so love-y for next time. 

M