本書詩歌的內容包羅愛情觀點，生活哲學，表達美好願望，追溯自身的歷史，抒發對和平的嚮往，表達對田園生活的熱愛，还有校園幽默等等，譬如愛德娜•聖文森•米蕾（Edna St. Vincent Millay）的【愛不是一切】(Love Is Not All), 卡爾•桑德堡（Carl Sandburg） 的【年輕的海】 （Young Sea），蘭斯頓•休斯(Langston Hughes) 的【黑人說河流】（The Negro Speaks Of Rivers），羅伯特•弗羅斯特（Robber Frost） 的【牧場】（The Pasture），約翰•麥克雷(John McCrae)的【在佛蘭德斯的田野上】（In Flanders Fields），克恩•奈斯比特（ Kenn Nesbitt ）的【我老師吃了我的作業】（My Teacher Ate My Homework）等等。
In the beginning of August, 2015, I received a copy of the Vietnam At War by the former Chinese Vietnamese writer, Mr Pan Zhou, and later it turned out to be the connection for me to know about Mr. Xue Zhenyu, a senior Chinese writer and poet in Vietnam. One day last summer, while I searched in the Internet, looking for historical information about my parents' hometown, also my birth place ----Vietnam, I surprisingly found the book, War At Vietnam by Mr. Pan, which later on impressed me a lot. So before I received his book I could not wait to read his other works published in Worldjournal.com and his blog where I read his stories such as Rambutan and A Mixed Race Child and some prose and poems.
Mr. Pan then introduced me to "Huang Yingquan Writing Workshop" on Facebook. This is a great writing workshop with members from all over the world, and most of them are Chinese originally from Vietnam, who are good at writing prose, novels, poetry and calligraphy and so on. One of the members I met there is Mr. Xue Zhenyu, who now is living in Vietnam. Talking with Mr. Xue is a pleasant thing to do. Mr. Xue is an accomplished writer, very knowledgeable, and has a good sense of humor. I am impressed by his witty and humorous writings, his great personality, personal charisma and accomplishment in translation.
I started to write and translate in 2013. I focused on poetry from ancient times and works by contemporary poets, modern novels, classic essays, jokes, lyrics etc., between Chinese and English. Most of the time I write poems in both English and Chinese. My two translation works, The Dancing Lady On The Street by Minglu Zeng, a Chinese writer from the States, and Talking About Finland by Tangfu, a Chinese writer from Finland were published in Guwahatian, an overseas Electronic journal:
Mr. Xue suggested that I should translate famous English poems into Chinese, so I began to put my heart into working on this book from mid-September, 2015. I searched poems from http://www.poemhunter.com, and selected 100 pieces by 21 renowned poets as original translation materials for this book. I had previously translated some of those poems. Poets in this book include: Maya Angelou, Margaret Atwood, William Blake, George Gordon Byron, Leonard Cohen, Emily Dickson, Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Ted Kooser, Edna St.Vincent Millay, Kenn Nesbitt, Ezra Pound, Edgar Allan Poe, Jack Prelutsky, John McCrae, Carl Sandburg, Wallace Stevens, Shel Silverstein, Sara Teasdale, Walt Whiteman, and William Butler Yeats. (Each poet is listed alphabetically by last name )
Contents of these poems include views of love, philosophy of life, aspirations, tracing back one's own history, good wishes for peace, love of American rural life, and campus humor, such as Love Is Not All by Edna St. Vincent Millay, Young Sea by Carl Sandburg, The Negro Speaks of Rivers by Langston Hughes, The Pasture by Robert Frost, In Flanders Fields by John McCrae, and My Teacher Ate My Homework by Kenn Nesbitt's and so on.
Readers will learn western views of love and philosophy of life, experience the American rural life, and at the same time, will enjoy the campus humor by bursting into laughter when reading those children's poems. In this book, I selected two to ten poems for each poet for the translation, all are accompanied by the author's bilingual introduction. I did my best to be accurate, vivid and natural when translating the meaning, beauty and the rhyme of each poem into Chinese, trying to lead the reader into the unprecedented western literary world, to explore the charm of English language and western culture.
During the process of translating this book, I received suggestions from Mr. Xu Yingcai, a professor from the States. Professor Xu' books include: A Selection From the Eight Great Prose Masters of The Tang And Song Dynasties, Selected Works Of Contemporary Chinese Prose, and The translation of Chinese Classical Prose. In September, 2015, A Selection From the Eight Great Prose Masters of The Tang And Song Dynasties and Selected Works Of Contemporary Chinese Prose were given to Lincoln High School by the President of the People's Republic of China, Mr. Xi Jingping, as gifts for learning translation, Chinese culture and language, they are also designated materials for students in China to take the entrance exam of the post-graduate study of classical literature translation. I have been influenced and inspired by the translation principles promoted by Mr. Xu, which are: accuracy, vividness and naturalness. I am grateful for the invitation from Mr. Xue and the opportunity of working together with him. I appreciate his attitude of helping and encouraging younger people to contribute into the translation field. Nevertheless, due to time limits, please accept my sincerest apologies for any mistakes I may make in this book, and I thank you in advance for your time!
Liu Xiaoman Jan. 14， 2016
My Profound Enlightenment of Poetry
One day a few years ago I chatted with one of my Canadian friends. I asked her if she was interested in poems. She said that she had read many novels and stories, but poems indeed are not her cup of tea. Anyway she then told me that she likes some traditional nursery rhymes and lullabies and some limericks as well.
She then taught me the following well-known two lined poem which I believe to be my significant poetry learning experience, my profound enlightenment education in my English poetry learning/ writing life. Based on my friend, they go like this:
"Here I sit broken hearted,
spent a penny and only farted. "
Just like many places around the world today, decades ago in Canada you needed to pay to use a public toilet. Ever since, I started to become very interested in English poems.
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