[1.1] Robert Frost said, “Poetry is what gets lost in translation.” Not necessarily: that thousands upon thousands of poems get translated back and forth in the world is evidence enough to the contrary.
羅伯特·弗羅斯特氏嘗言：“所謂詩意，失於移譯者也已。”余恐未必盡然。極目宇內，詩詞譯作何啻千萬，足證斯言之確非。

[1.2] And if you, dear Reader, take a look at the poems translated below in this book, you’ll find the meaning conveyed faithfully, cultural milieu kept in tact, and the poetic ethos enriched. Little, if anything, is lost.
讀者諸君凡經眼此卷譯詩者，可知其勝處有三：詞義忠信，風神完固，文采富鬱。即有所失，不亦微夫。

[2.1] Nevertheless, nobody has dwelt with greater cogency upon the enormous difficulty involved in poetry translation than Frost in the above-quoted remark. As I see it, translation of poetry requires that the translator have the makings of a poet in him or her. He/She absorbs the source poems with innate poetic sensibilities until they become part of his/her aesthetic being.
然論譯詩之艱，弗氏此語可謂知言之極。竊以爲，譯詩之人當具作詩之才，得以腹笥錦繡，饕餮原詩，而融諸性靈也。

[2.2] The empathy is such that the absorbed poems stir, agitate, even haunt him/her, making the utterance of them an absolute must as Jin Shengtan said. By now the translator has to turn to be a poet in the target language in his/her own right, relying on an abundance of prior poetic experience in it.
必也乎中心翻沸，爲夢爲魘。其神往之深，情專之切，金聖嘆①所謂“必欲說出之一句話”是矣。於譯入之文字，尤須渤涉嵩覽，靜味細玩，方可稱詩家。
①金聖嘆（1608-61），本名采，字若采，入清後改名人瑞，字聖嘆。吳縣（今江蘇蘇州）人。其《致家伯長文昌書信》云：“詩非異物，只是人人心頭舌尖所萬不獲已，必欲說出之一句說話耳。”

[2.3] A songster, as it were, who cannot enjoy a minute of peace of mind unless the song is sung. Poetry translation worth its salt invariably involves such a receptive-productive process.
一如歌人，曲不竟謳，則須臾難安。是故吞隋珠，吐和璧，而詩之良譯可待矣。

[3.1] Professor Ren Zhiji or Charles Jen as he is known in the US, an old friend of mine since the 1960s, from whom I’ve learned a lot as it was our wont to discuss matters concerning English and other subjects so much so that during the so-called Cultural Revolution in China we were accused of “scratching each other’s back in a coterie like the Hungarian Petrofi Club,” has enough qualifications of this kind and to spare.
任兄治稷教授先生，以“任查理”之名聞達乎美利堅國，乃余卌載舊雨。疇曩長與暢論英文諸事，多承教澤。“文革”釁起，與余共爲肖小誣作“裴多菲俱樂部互相撓背抓癢之徒”。以其造詣譯詩，固非峻業。

[3.2] He was born an Odysseus, not that he seeks adventures, but that he is a nostalgic by nature. I remember swapping writings in English with him for comment or pleasure reading in the early 1960s. One sentence in one of his essays has never escaped my memory: “Suddenly a cuckoo called. The only audibility in the mountains. And we were thinking of mother.”
任兄稟奧德賽之氣質。此非言懷貪奇弄險之癖，實謂有追往憶舊之好。猶記四十年前，以英文酬唱，互指疵瑕，相與爲樂。兄有句云：“忽聽子規吟。山深空留音。聞者憶慈親。”此余未嘗或忘心間者也。

[4.1] For Ren, emigration happened when he had outlived an ardent age. What remains now is no longer the ecstasy of new horizons but rather the apotheosis of memory. No wonder he has zeroed in on ancient Chinese poetry mostly with a motif of nostalgia and homesickness.
任兄始寓美國，已逾花酒盛年。初入异邦新域之狂喜既歇，今淹留者惟冥然兀思往事而已。是以所譯詩詞，皆選懷舊戀鄉之作，未足奇也。

[4.2] People notice that unless he/she is a dolce vita in the mainstream, a feeling émigré, like Milan Kundera, cannot but look back and sing with a heart throbbing with emotion worthy of a Homeric epic: “Alone, in a sadness sublime,/And tears come!” Greater pathos is couched in seemingly light-hearted lines such as “Kids…/Asked me smiling WHERE’S MY HOME.”
大凡游子多愁，若非佼佼然逞志於他國者，其必如米蘭·昆德拉氏，莫不回望前塵，心怦怦動，於焉萌甦之情，何其淵默，即以荷馬詩史出之，亦不爲過：“獨愴然而泪下。”再如“兒童……笑問客從何處來”之語，乍看似戲謔，然此中自有力感頑艶之哀。

[4.3] I feel my old friend is tackling a reconciliation with the finitude of life with these lines. In this sense, the value of Ren’s translations far exceeds poetry alone but is a good sample of diasporic literature.
竊忖兄或以此詩句，聊慰浮生有限之憾恨。由是觀之，兄之所譯，非特閾於謌詩一區，洵爲羈客文學之楷式哉。

[5.1] Technically, Ren’s preference to condensed, succinct phrasal utterances instead of to drawn-out, grammatically viable sentences shows how well he grasps the quintessence of poetry. Stylistic devices like synesthesia (e.g., “Green moss lit up by the echoing flare”) abound only where they are comfortably apt.
以詩藝論，任兄雅好凝煉，不拘字義文法之桎梏，不落贅詞冗句之窠臼，真知詩之三昧者。修辭藻繪，若“聯覺”之類（如“複照青苔上”之譯句），惟契合文脉處，方得見用。

[5.2] Rhythm and rhyming are continuously a Kierkegaard Either/Or proposition in poetry translation. Ren handles both with aplomb; unrhymed but pleasantly rhythmic lines are fully justified especially when the translator aims at an English-speaking readership accustomed to a time-honored poetic tradition traceable to Shakespeare’s blank verse.
韵律之於詩歌，齊格高氏②所謂“非此即彼，不可兼得”者。而兄犀心夢筆，無不信手拈來。英美詩學，素尊家法，究其本源，則莎士比亞之“白體詩”也。兄之譯作，遣句遂少韵而多律，琅琅可誦，蓋俾英語讀者習慣便利之故耳，詎可以此非之乎？
②通譯“克爾愷郭爾”。

[6] Mr. Yu Zheng, the other translator, is but a slight acquaintance. He did excel among his age peers when he studied at Fudan University, Shanghai, in a class which both Ren and I taught. He has since been remembered as an assiduous and affable young man — with few words but a lot of promise. If he doesn’t feature prominently in this foreword, I sincerely beg his pardon.
余正老弟，襄協譯事，惜余與其交識尚淺。曩在海上，負笈復旦，任兄與余嘗授課業，以爲有卓越同倫之秀。因知此君，勤勉謙退，訥於虛言而敏於躬踐。拙序嘉贊未多，祈勿罪。