So I said at first that option number one reads best to me offhand, but on second thoughts I wanted to know what the original poem was like and then look at these renditions again. So here's the version I would share with someone who has watched a Chinese period costume drama at least ONCE in their lives.
青青河畔草 - green, green is the grass by the riverbank
by Unknown (202 BCE - 220 CE), second of the Nineteen Old Poems
青青河畔草 鬱鬱園中柳
qīng qīng hé pàn cǎo yù yù yuán zhōng liǔ
Verdant is the grass by the riverbank, luxuriant, the willows in the garden.
盈盈樓上女 皎皎當窗牖
yíng yíng lóu shàng nǚ jiǎo jiǎo dāng chuāng yǒu
Graceful is the lady there on the upper floor, luminous before the window -
娥娥紅粉妝 纖纖出素手
é é hóng fěn zhuāng xiān xiān chū sù shǒu
lovely in her rouge and powder, delicate fingers on her fair hand extended.
昔為倡家女 今為蕩子婦
xī wèi chàng jiā nǚ jīn wéi dàng zǐ fù
Once the daughter of a performing House, now the wife of a wayfarer -
蕩子行不歸 空床難獨守
dàng zǐ xíng bù guī kōng chuáng nán dú shǒu
a wayfarer who has not returned, with an empty bed hard to mind alone.
Side note: Wondering what a house which allows one to stand at the window to both be seen by the passers by outside and observe the garden would look like, I looked for Han dynasty tomb rubbings and grave good miniatures as examples. Here is one excavated in Henan!
The first translation with its vaguely medieval - or at the very least trying for amorphously historical imagery through words like glistening gown, casement, roué - seems to be adapted for readers who have never watched a cdrama in their lives and cannot imagine what a Han dynasty setting might look like. The translator probably swapped out the context for a more localized feel to their own culture’s historical settings... Making every sentence’s middle and end rhyme was a little silly and creates this funny sing-song effect when read aloud, but then so is the unserious tone of the original and the doubled words in its first three lines has a similar effect. Anyway, I’m not a fan of the localisation, but it was interesting to see the scene transplanted thus.
It was amusing to see 盈盈, which elsewhere in the Nineteen Poems is indeed used as a descriptor for the silver river (aka the milky way), envisioned by the translator as ‘glistening’ here. They also might have understood it in the brimming/overflowing sense and associated it with her figure as they pictured her ‘rounded arm’. There’s no other logical explanation and place to derive it. 纖纖 can only mean slender! I also don’t believe ‘careless roué’ is the description for a 荡子 in this context, but can understand the choice.
Overall I appreciated ‘Ah, if he does not mind his own, / He'll find someday the bird has flown’ the most because it shows his own understanding of the poem (It’s a Han Dynasty suggestive pop song and he knows it!). And locking in is always a fun choice to make when translating!
The second one is a piece of work…🤣 I’m not sure it can be called a translation because it has remixed nearly every line, but not quite in a manner creative enough to be considered derivative? They’re writing an AU where ‘the mistress’ is a lonely little nightingale in a cage with a drunken owner by funhouse mirror style paraphrasing. Unlike the first one, I can’t tell what they’re going for at all here? It’s like someone gave them one of those word by word lists of definitions of each sentence for beginners, and they cherry picked what they liked to construct a story. Taken as a translation, what a mess! LOL. Downvote! Downvote!
Special callout to the most choices of choices, ‘Blue, blue is the grass…’, ‘courtezan’ spelled with a z (it’s giving 1700s) and ‘a sot’.
The only quarter point for effort I’ll give is for the bending over backwards to nod at the original’s structure xD 青青 blue, blue / 鬱鬱 willows, overfilled (????) / 盈盈 mistress, midmost / 皎皎 white, white (really????) / (娥娥 line was skipped entirely -0.25pts) / 纖纖 slender, slender hand.
What to say about the third one.
I mentioned the word-for-word for learners earlier, this is like that, except certain ‘definitions’ seem completely pulled from thin air, with no corresponding words in the original. ‘Sad, sad’ is an invention. ‘Casement’ is an invention.
It’s not trying to be a creative work, but it’s also not being entirely faithful.
Overall, directionless and the worst of the lot!
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