The Challenge of Translating Classical Chinese
Before diving into specific translations, it helps to understand what makes this work so difficult.
Classical Chinese poetry operates on principles that have no real equivalent in English. The regulated verse form known as 律诗 (lǜshī) demands tonal parallelism, where each line mirrors another in grammatical structure and tonal pattern. The five-character line (五言, wǔyán) and seven-character line (七言, qīyán) create a rhythmic density that English syllables simply cannot replicate.
Then there's the problem of the missing subject. Classical Chinese drops pronouns constantly. When Du Fu (杜甫, Dù Fǔ) writes about moonlight and longing, it's often unclear whether the speaker is watching the moon, remembering someone watching the moon, or imagining a distant friend watching the same moon. This ambiguity is a feature, not a bug. English forces a choice. Translators must decide, and every decision is a small loss.
Finally, there's the weight of allusion (典故, diǎngù). Tang poets wrote for an audience steeped in the Confucian classics, the Book of Songs (诗经, Shījīng), and centuries of prior poetry. A single phrase could echo a dozen earlier poems simultaneously. Most English readers arrive without that context, and footnotes, however thorough, are a poor substitute for cultural memory.
---Arthur Waley: The Pioneer
No conversation about Chinese poetry in English starts anywhere other than Arthur Waley. His 1918 collection 170 Chinese Poems introduced Western readers to a tradition they had largely ignored, and it did so with a translator's instinct that remains impressive over a century later.
Waley's approach was deliberately prosaic. He rejected rhyme, arguing that English rhyme carries associations — of nursery songs, of forced cheerfulness — that distort the tone of Chinese verse. Instead he used a loose rhythmic line based on stress patterns, which he called "sprung rhythm" in the tradition of Gerard Manley Hopkins.
His translation of Wang Wei's (王维, Wáng Wéi) famous quatrain "Deer Park" (鹿柴, Lù Zhài) captures the emptiness and stillness of the original with quiet authority:
> Empty hills, no man in sight, > Only the sound of someone talking; > Late sunlight enters the deep wood, > Shining over the green moss, again.
Waley understood that Wang Wei's Buddhism (禅, Chán) was inseparable from his imagery. The emptiness (空, kōng) in that first line isn't just a landscape description — it's a philosophical statement. Waley doesn't explain this; he trusts the image to do the work.
His weakness is a tendency toward Victorian diction that occasionally makes Tang poets sound like minor Romantics. But as a foundation, his work remains essential.
---Kenneth Rexroth: The Poet's Touch
Where Waley was a scholar who wrote beautifully, Kenneth Rexroth was a poet who read Chinese. The difference shows on every page of his One Hundred Poems from the Chinese (1956) and Love and the Turning Year (1970).
Rexroth's translations of Du Fu are widely considered the finest in English. He had an instinct for the emotional core of a poem and the courage to strip away everything else. His version of Du Fu's "Spring View" (春望, Chūn Wàng) — written during the An Lushan Rebellion (安史之乱, Ān Shǐ zhī Luàn) when the Tang dynasty nearly collapsed — is devastating in its simplicity:
> The nation is broken. Mountains and rivers remain. > Spring comes to the ruined city. Grass and trees grow deep. > Moved by the times, flowers draw tears. > Hating separation, birds alarm the heart.
The original opens with one of the most famous couplets in all of Chinese literature: 国破山河在，城春草木深 (guó pò shān hé zài, chéng chūn cǎo mù shēn). Rexroth preserves the paradox — destruction and natural renewal existing simultaneously — without over-explaining it.
His translations of the women poets, particularly Li Qingzhao (李清照, Lǐ Qīngzhào), are equally strong. He understood that her ci poetry (词, cí) — the song lyric form that flourished in the Song dynasty — required a different register than Tang regulated verse, and he adjusted accordingly.
The criticism of Rexroth is that he sometimes takes liberties that shade into invention. His translations of the poet "Marichiko" were later revealed to be original compositions he attributed to a fictional Japanese woman. This raises legitimate questions about where translation ends and creative appropriation begins.
---Burton Watson: The Scholar's Standard
If Rexroth is the poet's translator, Burton Watson is the scholar's. His translations of Du Fu, Han Shan (寒山, Hán Shān), and the anthology The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry (1984) set the standard for accuracy and contextual depth.
Watson's great virtue is reliability. When he translates a line, you can trust that it reflects what the Chinese actually says. His notes are thorough without being pedantic, and his introductions give readers genuine historical and literary context.
His translation of Li Bai (李白, Lǐ Bái) — the other titan of Tang poetry alongside Du Fu — captures the wild, Daoist (道家, Dàojiā) energy that makes Li Bai so distinctive. Where Du Fu is the Confucian moralist, the poet of social conscience and historical witness, Li Bai is the immortal wanderer, drunk on wine (酒, jiǔ) and moonlight. Watson's version of "Quiet Night Thought" (静夜思, Jìng Yè Sī) is clean and direct.