From Diana Shuheng Zhang:
This English translation is modified based on pages 26-28 of the article — Adams, Douglas Q: "More thoughts on Tocharian B prosody," Tocharian and Indo-European Studies 14 (2013), 3-30.
A fragmentary manuscript in Tocharian B, ca. 600 AD, excavated in Kucha (Qizil Miŋ-Öy), Berlin Turfan Collection. Now stored at Frankfurt. No. THT 496, B 496.
Read the rest of this entry »
In my Middle Vernacular Sinitic (MVS) seminar yesterday evening, Diana Shuheng Zhang submitted this translation:
gèng yǒu fēngliú shè núzi
néng jiāng pánpà lái qī ěr
báimǎ qīngpáo huō yǎn míng
xǔ tā zhēnshi chá láng suǐ
更有風流歙奴子
能將盤帕來欺爾
白馬青袍豁眼明
許他真是查郎髓
Li She 李涉 (fl. 806-835)《Què guī Bālíng túzhōng zǒubǐ jì Táng Zhī yán 卻歸巴陵途中走筆寄唐知言》 “Returning Once Again to Baling, Written Hastily [lit., Running My Brush] En Route to Confide in Words to Tang Zhi”
The entire poem in 44 lines may be found here.
Read the rest of this entry »
As part of our research on the dictionary of Middle Vernacular Sinitic (MVS) that Zhu Qingzhi and I have been working on for more than two decades, I was tickled by this quaint poem (below on the second page) by the medieval Buddhist poet, Wáng Fànzhì 王梵志 (Brahmacārin ब्रह्मचारिन् Wang; fl. first half of 7th c.).
I have been an avid fan of Wáng Fànzhì's unique poetry for nearly half a century. Quaint, indeed, and also quirky. Wang Fanzhi is self-demeaning in a funny, adorable way. The poem I'm about to introduce you to is a good example of his trademark self-abnegation.
What attracted me particularly to this poem for the purposes of our research on MVS is the first word in line 2, chǎngtóu 長頭 ("for a long time"), which does not exist with this meaning in Literary Sinitic (LS) / Classical Chinese (CC). Finding chǎngtóu 長頭 ("for a long time") in Wang Fanzhi's poem was already enough of a treat, but when I got to the last word of the couplet, I was even more delighted. As you will momentarily see, what Wang says about his wife's tummy is funny by itself, but the word he uses to describe what the wife does to her tummy made me even more excited.
But let's read the poem first, then I'll talk about the word in question, namely, méisuō 沒娑 ("massage").
Read the rest of this entry »
Email today from Edwin Williams:
I constructed "new" sonnets from Shakespeare's sonnets by this formula: from a set of 7 randomly selected Shakespeare sonnets (a…g) I made a new sonnet "a b a b c d c d e f e f g g", which means, the first line is taken from the first line of sonnet a, the second line from sonnet the second line of sonnet b, etc. So no two adjacent lines were from the same sonnet, except the last two. I made 154 of these (same number as S made).
I did it for fun but was startled by the result–the new sonnets were sonnetlike, felt syntactically coherent, and begged for interpretation. People I sent them to were fascinated by them, even when they saw what I had done, or after I told them. One of them, Craig Dworkin, a poet I got to know when he was at Princeton in the 90s, asked to include them in his e-poetry site, and there they sit: http://eclipsearchive.org/projects/EDWIN/.
Read the rest of this entry »
Two of the best known displays of Chinese culture worldwide are the Lion Dance and Dragon Boat Races. The former, including the Chinese word for "lion", is actually an import from the Western Regions (Central Asia, or East Central Asia more specifically).
Compare Old Persian * (*šagra-) (sgl /sagr, sēr/) (> Persian سیر (sīr)). The Middle Persian word is cognate with Parthian (šarg, “Leo; Lion”), Khotanese [script (šarau, “Leo; Lion”), Khwarezmian شرغ (šrγ /šarγ/, “Leo; Lion”) and Sogdian (šrwγ /šruγ/) , ܫܪܘܮ (šrwγ /šruγ/, “Leo; Lion”)
Middle Persian:
Kipling-Disney: Shere Khan (" Tiger Lion" — from Persian and Mongolian)
Read the rest of this entry »
[This is a guest post by Nicholas Morrow Williams]
Victor recently pointed out to me the appearance of Martin Kern’s important article in the latest issue of Early China on “Xi Shuai” 蟋蟀 (“Cricket”) and Its Consequences: Issues in Early Chinese Poetry and Textual Studies” (Early China 42 [2019]: 39–74). Kern’s article offers both a very detailed examination of the poem “Cricket” contained in a Tsinghua manuscript, which differs substantially from the comparable poem in the Shijing 詩經, and also reflections on the broader significance of the manuscript for “textual studies.”
The article is well worth reading both the recently-discovered poem and for the broader reflections, but I would like to discuss one issue to which it does not devote so much attention, which is the interpretation of the received text of “Cricket” in the Shijing itself. After comparing the excavated and received texts, Kern concludes:
Read the rest of this entry »
We've been through a lot of atrocious Chinglish (check the archives under "Lost in translation"), so we should acknowledge, and even revel in, translational equivalents that are outstandingly good.
It suddenly occurs to me that the Chinese translation of the American cosmetic brand Revlon is so beautiful that it deserves to be highlighted here:
lù huá nóng 露華濃 ("dew [that is] splendid [and] dense")
On the one hand, "Luhuanong" serves as a sound transcription of "Revlon". On the other hand, the translation of these three syllables provides an apt meaning for the brand name.
Read the rest of this entry »
People have been wondering when Hong Kong's magnates would speak out on the prolonged protests in their city. Finally one has. That's Li Ka-shing, the richest of them all: "HK Billionaire Li Ka-Shing Breaks Silence Over Protests" (8/15/19 newscast on YouTube). He took out full page advertisements (both seem to be on the front page) in two of Hong Kong's most influential financial newspapers: Hong Kong Economic Times and Hong Kong Economic Journal. Here's the first:
Read the rest of this entry »
[This is a guest post by Tsu-Lin Mei]
In 1976 I was in Kyoto for my sabbatical leave and I attended Yoshikawa Kojiro’s (Yoshikawa Kōjirō 吉川幸次郎; 18 March 1904 – 8 April 1980) private seminar on Tu Fu (712-770). The seminar was held in a room in the Kyoto University Faculty Club and we were reading Tu Fu. One day when we were reading "Lìrén xíng 麗人行" ("Ballad of Beautiful Women")，Yoshikawa looked up and said to me: "Méi xiānshēng, Zhōngguórén zài Táng cháo yǐjīng zài chī sashimi 梅先生， 中國人在唐朝已經在吃 sashimi" ("Mr. Mei, the Chinese were already eating sashimi during the Tang Dynasty [618-907]"). And he pointed to this passage: "Shuǐjīng zhī pán xíng sù lín, xī jīn yànyù jiǔ wèi xià, luán dāo lǚ qiè kōng fēnlún 水精之盤行素鱗，犀筋饜飫久未下，鸞刀縷切空紛綸。") ("Crystal plates brought out raw fish; Satiated revelers stopped using their ivory chopsticks; [The chefs] wielded their ornate cutting knives in vain.")
Read the rest of this entry »
This article (in Chinese) describes how China's netizens (wǎngyǒu 网友) are ridiculing President Xi for inappropriately quoting a poem by Kong Rong 孔融 (153-208), a 20th generation descendant of Confucius, in his New Year's address to the nation.
The first lines of the poem are:
suìyuè bù jū
shíjié rú liú
歲月不居
時節如流
The years do not stand still,
Time flows on like a river.
Read the rest of this entry »
Thorin Engeseth sent in these two photographs of a Zara brand shirt that his wife bought yesterday:
Read the rest of this entry »
