Chinese poetry in Scots translation

What is it about?

This chapter offers a historical survey of Chinese poetry in Scots translation. It covers a period of Scottish literary history extending from the 19th century to the present day. James Legge, an early translator of Chinese, included two co-translated ‘ballads’ in Scots in his metrical edition of 'The She King or Book of Poetry' (1876). Legge’s translations were known to Ezra Pound, whose translations of Chinese classical poetry were a major influence on anglophone modernist literature. The influence of both Legge and Pound is evident in translations of Chinese classical poetry by Douglas Young, a major figure in the modern Scottish renaissance. David Purves’ later versions of Chinese poems are filtered through a modernist American bridging translation, while Edwin Morgan’s revisiting of Pound in Scots marks a shift towards post-modernism. More recent translations by Robert Crawford, Brian Holton and others demonstrate the continuing potential of Scots translation of Chinese classical poetry to be a barometer of modernist, post-modernist and ‘ethical’ contemporary literary trends. Modern Chinese poetry has been less frequently addressed by Scots translators, with the major exception of Yang Lian, a ‘Misty Poet’, translated by Brian and Harvey Holton, and Jidi Majia, whose work has been rendered into Lowland Scots, Doric, and Shetlandic, respectively by Stuart Paterson, Sheena Blackhall and Christine de Luca. The chapter explores the appositeness of Scots for the translation of these contemporary Chinese poets in particular.

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Photo by Nuno Alberto on Unsplash

Photo by Nuno Alberto on Unsplash

Why is it important?

The chapter is a key part of a groundbreaking collection of essays that explore the literary connections between Scotland and China. The collection is innovative in that it looks in both directions: it covers the role of China and translations from Chinese in Scottish literature, and also the translation and reception of Scottish literature in China. The featured chapter addresses the role of translations from Chinese in preserving and sustaining Scots-language poetry over the past 150 years. During that period, translations from Chinese into Scots align with different movements: Romantic, Modernist, and Post-Modernist. The ethics of the appropriation of Chinese poetry into the Scots literary canon are also discussed.

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