halfcactus

Happy Mid-Autumn!

Spent a fair amount of the weekend with family because relatives had flown in for a wedding the following day (my cousin's cousin). Also read 繁星, Bing Xin's collected poetry fragments, because Zhang Xincheng was doing a reading for the Mid-Autumn Festival Gala... ended up subbing it myself and reading the English translation (book link: A Maze of Stars and Spring Water), a worthwhile exercise since the original text was still pretty fresh in my head and I could follow along the translation choices. Posting the original text + translations here for my reference!

My translation:

Watch on YouTube

Idk if this makes sense, but I consider myself more of a subber than a translator, so generally I don't think my "translations" hold up in text form haha. I love how the video format allows me to disregard form and line breaks, because as much as I enjoy reading freeform poetry I have nooooo understanding of the craft.

I don't really have any notes, other than me giving up on finding synonyms for "deep" so I subbed it with words for distance, and that the line 灿烂光中的休息处 is very much open to interpretation, so I went with the image that was in my head when I was reading it.

( My translation (line by line with the original Chinese text) )

Published translation (it's unclear who translated it):
Source: A Maze of Stars and Spring Water
( 'A maze of stars glistens...' )

Art recs (mostly Mid-Autumn related)