— Anonymous
Li Po is a famous Chinese poet, who had written numerous romantic and emotional poems. I have read a few of his poems in elementary school, like “Quiet Night Thought”. “Drinking Alone in the Moonlight” is the longer version of the “Quiet Night Thought”. “Quiet Night Thought” is usually taught in the first grade while “Drinking Alone in the Moonlight” is usually taught in middle school. They both resemble the same theme that Li Po always finding himself alone, which this feeling amplifies in the night. However, this is the first time I read his “Drinking Alone in the Moonlight” and I read it in English. It was quite confusing to me at first, because I didn’t fully understand the translation like the “Milky Way”. At first, I thought the “Milky Way” was referred to the endless, hollow, dark space, where there’s no live objects around. In fact, the class discussion explained this term similarly to my understanding. However, after I read the poem in Chinese and looked up the explanation, I found out the “Milky Way” in Chinese was different from the one in English. The “Milky Way” in Chinese was referring to space where no one can reach, all the way high up in the sky. There is still clouds and wind. The English “Milky Way” furthered the meaning and imagine to a wider, emptier space. One is with light and the other is not. The Chinese ending hints the readers that there might still some possibilities that Li Po will find his true soul mate in the future. In contrast, the English ending hints there’s no such possibility, because Milky Way is dark and hollow. It is an endless loop. Once people get trap in a place like that, they won’t get out no matter what. At the end, “Milky Way” so far is the best English translation, because every Chinese word has multiple meanings regarding to the text. As a reader, I can’t think of any better translation than “Milky Way”. Secondly, I wasn’t so enjoyed the way the poem written in English, because the translator could’ve done better on putting the lines together. The wordings are great. I feel the version 1 translation is more like translating from word to word and version 2 is like the whole line. Version 2 is much easier to understand. However, after class analysis about the poem, I found out version 1 is more in detail and closer to the Chinese version. Though the lines are little awkward, it creates great images for the readers. The readers can see Li Po’s true feeling about struggling between loneliness and companionship, such as he would dance with his shadow, and chat with the moon as he drinks wine. My sister had learned “Drinking Alone in the Moonlight” while she was in school. She explained to me that Li Po’s poem could be such emotional was greatly because he left his home town for learning when he was a teenager. In the Chinese culture, there’s a saying that reading millions of books is no better than walking millions of road. Li Po put down what he had seen during his journey and his thoughts about his home town in his poems, and that made his poems still popular today, even oversea. Li Po’s poems are still being taught in the Chinese school, ranging from preschool to college.
