Each interpretation of this song shows us how each translator read the song. While they all tell the same story, the differences in language used vary greatly. I will discuss the interpretations by W. J. B. Fletcher, Amy Lowell, and Wai-Lim Yip.
The first difference I noticed was the difference between W. J. B. Fletcher’s interpretation and everyone else’s. Fletcher’s interpretation is full of exclamation marks and has a clearer pattern to it. It seems to be more like a song than the others the read like poems.
Another difference i noticed was Fletcher’s and Lowell’s interpretation of Long Wind Sand. In the last line of Fletcher’s interpretation it says, “Across the sand the wind flies straight to greet.” This shows us how he thinks of it as passing through the desert. Lowell interprets it to say, “I will go straight until I reach the Long Wind Sands.” Lowell’s interprets Long Wind Sands to sound more like a location instead of the act of travelling through a desert like Fletcher’s interpretation.
The third difference i noticed was between Yip and Lowell’s wording of the poem. Yip’s interpretation stayed in the point of view of the wife’s throughout the entire poem while Lowell’s starts off with an outsider’s point of view. Throughout Yip’s interpretation the wife tells the story using I, my, and we while Lowell starts the poem with “When the hair of your Unworthy One first began to cover her forehead, / She picked flowers and played in front of the door.” Lowell pictures the beginning of the song as a third person narrator creating the scene in which the story starts.
My favorite translation was by Wai=Lim Yip because his translation seemed the closest to what the song was trying to convey. It would have been the one by Fletcher, but his interpretation seemed too upbeat for a poem about a wife grieving about her missing husband.