A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems

"He wasn’t the earliest, but if you’re talking about his overall achievement he is definitely a pioneering figure. Especially for me. When I first started reading classical Chinese poetry in translation, the books that I could get were all by Arthur Waley. There were other translators before him, but in terms of the quality of translation Waley was the best. He uses one term, “poetic form”. What it means is that it’s not enough to convey the meaning of the original. He actually translated a lot more poems, but if he thought the translation was not up to the standard of poetic form, then he didn’t include the poem in his collection. That is something that made a great impression on me, in my own translations as well. Whether I’m translating my own poetry or a well-known poem, if for one reason or another I’m not happy with it in the target language, then I won’t include it no matter how good the original is. I can convey the meaning, there’s no question about that. But that’s not enough."