Hello All,
I have recently been asked by Jill Guo Jie to help her and husband - Li Hui - translate some captions for a big exhibition which they are helping to organize in BJ late September centered around the
Jing School. Very difficult but also worthwhile little project
For those of you who are new to the Forum, the Jing School is one of the four major schools of inside painting and the "Jing' refers to Beijing = Bei Jing = 北 京 - Northern Capital
The original was written in very 'high class' Chinese (for Western - speaking buffs - make than a Shakespearean type or a Winston Churchill speech to be translated into equivalent high standard Chinese ! )
Very hard to translate (even to understand) accurately, culturally and yet still fluently
This recalls a project that Steven / Forum member and I worked on a couple of years ago : to translate an introduction to an up-coming VMIPB artist : Yuan Shijia by a great Master : Wang Guanyu
Wang Guanyu wrote in the most highest possible literary Chinese (and obscure Chinese - as probably all elder artists like to do ? )
Steven and I worked through numerous drafts over 2-3 months : at least a dozen drafts. My grasp of simple written Chinese is at most 70% and literary Chinese << 50%. Steven's written Chinese comprehension is of course perfect but as to his "high class" English he maybe trails behind me by several %
FINALLY we agreed the best translation, but still we had to go to a specialist to THE best translation of the Title of the article
I think it's worthwhile to post both the Chinese and ( final -FINAL !) English translations
Cheers
Peter
