i've been translating poems this past year. you might have read some from my pbase page or from my other blogger page Minamina. yea, i love the challenge, and the beauty of it all. i've always thought the chinese poetic language is so elegent and timid, and have never thought english could come any close to it. though being a not-so bilingual speaker, i thought i should give a try to transform such a beautiful language into english.

perhaps it's not as fun reading it as writing it, but there might be someone who'd appreciate or even enjoy it, don't you think so? a few days ago i found a book called 'across the darkness of the river' in amazon.com. exactemente! although i've been looking for other translated poems of Xi Mu-rong online, they haven't exactly got the 'gist' of Xi's poetic character in the english language. though to be frank, i don't think i've reached that level myself either. can't criticise others if you are of the same type.

i've at last ordered the book from paddyfields this afternoon in the library. it's so funny. the front cover of 'across the darkness of the river' is a portrait of Xi Mu-rong. after reading many of her poems, i had imagined a face in my mind: a tall, slender woman with long hair, like the girl she drew in one of her poem books. well, this portrait of Xi Mu-rong is in fact a chubby lady with big eyes and BIG (i mean *big) and round plastic glasses. um, i'd say it was *nothing* like how i imagined.

sometimes, i wondered how people will think of me after reading my prose/poems and my photos. i guess i'm *also* nothing like how you imagine it...... a skinny girl with long straight/boring black hair. doesn't that sound a bit like the Xi Mu-rong that i imagined?