China the Beautiful

[ElisaSerra]

Hello,

I am a graduate student of the University of Barcelona doing my research work on the translation to Catalan of the following poems of Shu Ting: 一代人的呼声， 碧潭水，給二舅舅的家書。 I am thoroughly exploring the many Chinese Internet resources on the web to find academic works that may have already been done where I can find complementary information about these poems. Unfortunately, I am not very successful.

All I am able to find is from Renditions:

“The Cry of a Generation” translated by Richard King, Renditions No 50, autumn 1998

Article “Into the Mist”, Renditions Nos 19-20, spring & autumn 1983

Special Issue Contemporary Women Writers, Nos 27-28, spring & autumn 1987

Six Poems by Shu Ting translated by E. Hung, No 39, spring 1993

Shu Ting: Mother Tongue, a Poem Cycle (translated by Mary M.Y. Fung), No 57, spring 2002

Selected Poems – Shu Ting-. Renditions Paperbacks, published by The Research Center for Translation of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1994

The poems in there offer the raw translation only with no additional, specific details on them. There is indeed an article that talks about Shu Ting's work, but I wonder if there are more out there.

I also checked in http://mclc.osu.edu/ but again, no success. Then I found out this forum. Any information you can give me will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.
Elisa

[chinapage]

Dear Ellsa:

The fact is there is very few translations of contemporary Chinese poetry on the web.

There are many reasons for this. One of the reason is the copyright laws,
I do not expect the situation will change for many years.

On the other hand, there are many many materials available about classical Chinese
poetry. No copyright restrictions. Have you studied them? See
http://www.chinapage.com/peotry9.html

Ming

[ElisaSerra]

Dear Ming:

Thank you for your answer.

I have studied contemporary Chinese. Unfortunately, my knowledge of Classical Chinese is very poor, I wouldn’t attempt translating classical Chinese Poetry at all. But we do have certainly learned about classical poetry at the university through translated versions.

I am interested in women’s poetry, especially of those that are mothers, that come from the bottom of the society, and feel the “call” of writing. Shu Ting’s has in her poetry what I am looking for. If you can give me names of such women that left anything written in the past that is worth-reading, I would be eternally grateful. I will put them in my list.

I do not quite understand what you mean with the copyright laws. Isn’t it the maximum aspiration for a poet, have his/her poetry known everywhere? Please explain. Maybe I am too naïve.

On the other hand, maybe I didn’t quite explain myself. I am not really looking for translations. I would like to find additional information about the poems above. If it exists, it will be probably be in Chinese.

Thanks again so much,

Elisa