Tang Dynasty Poetry - English Translators of Tang Poetry

English Translators of Tang Poetry

English Translators of Tang poetry include Herbert Giles, L. Cranmer-Byng, Archie Barnes, Amy Lowell, Arthur Waley, Witter Bynner, A. C. Graham, Shigeyoshi Obata, Burton Watson, Gary Snyder, David Hinton, Wai-lim Yip, Red Pine (Bill Porter), and Xian Mao: all considered more-or-less fair translations. In the Nineteenth Century, Ernest Fenollosa, wrote up some notes toward translating Chinese poetry, indirectly through the Japanese, including some Li Bai poems, which were later adapted by Ezra Pound and published in his book Cathay: the results, although of some influence on poetry, do not meet the minimum criteria of a translation, in terms of fidelity to the original text (an interesting anecdote in this respect is that Robert Graves says, "I once asked Arthur Waley how much Chinese Pound knew; Waley shook his head despondently.").