Why We Need to Read Chinese Poetry in Manchu

I've been trying to improve my understanding of Manchu poetry by reading Manchu translations of Chinese verse. One of the surprises that has come out of this is that English translators of Chinese poetry often miss important points that are captured in Manchu translations.

As an example, this morning I have been looking at a poem titled Light Rain in Early Spring (初春小雨) by Han Yu (韓愈). Here is the Chinese text, and Jakdan's translation:

天街小雨潤如酥,		alban giyai imenggi-i gesei aga busu busu,
草色遙看近卻無;		orhoi boco gorokici sabucibe cincilaci dule akū;
最是一年春好處,		emu aniyai niyengniyeri saikan ba jing ere,
絕勝煙柳滿皇都.		gubci hecen-i burgašara fodoho ci cingkai fulu.

Jakdan's translation is relatively easy to understand:

The rain, like [a sheen of] oil on Government Service street, falls lightly,
though one sees the color of grass from afar, if one looks closely it is not really there.

Where the Chinese has "Heaven Street" (天街), Jakdan has rendered this as the more prosaic "Government Service Street." Jakdan apparently takes this to be a street in the capital where court officials worked. This goes well with the second line about the color of grass, because in the imperial palace in Beijing green tiles appear on buildings used by court officials, as opposed to yellow tiles on buildings used by the imperial family.

Here we see a quarter of the city where government workers toil away, a place that is probably normally quite dull, but the rain falling on it makes it shine, and from a distance the green tiles look like grass.

This sets us up for the second half:

The most beautiful spring scene of the whole year is this very one,
far better than the willows that hang everywhere over the city.

The conclusion of the poem is that the soft spring rain has transformed an otherwise dreary place into the most beautiful scene to be found anywhere.

Having read Jakdan first, the Chinese is relatively easy to understand. But if I only had access to the Chinese, I doubt I would fare so well, and I'm not alone. Most of the translations and interpretations that I have found of this poem miss the important point that the spring rain has transformed a mundane scene to one of beauty, and focus instead on the concrete imagery of the grass and the willows.

Here are four English translations, all of which treat the grass as literal grass, and take the willows to be the main subject of the second couplet:

https://www.chinlingo.com/articles/601316/
http://www.chinese-poems.com/h3t.html
http://www.learnancientchinesepoetry.org/2019/02/22/han-yu-early-spring-write-to-zhang-the-eighteenth-now-engaged-as-a-flood-control-officer/
https://www.dougwestendorp.com/poetry-journal

Lest we think that these failures are unique to English translators, there is also Baidu article on this poem with a modern Mandarin translation, here:

https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E5%88%9D%E6%98%A5%E5%B0%8F%E9%9B%A8

The Baidu translation takes 酥 to mean "yogurt" (酥酪), which comes across as a little strange. It also takes the grass to be literally present, though "sparse" (稀疏零星) on closer examination, despite the fact that in the original poem the grass is not there at all (無).

The Baidu translator also takes the willows to be the main subject of the last couplet, rendering the last line as 最美不过杨柳满城的长安, "The most beautiful, but for the willow-filled city of Chang'an."

I think it's fair to say we could learn a lot from reading the Manchu translations of Chinese poetry. These were, after all, made by people who were usually closer to the subject than we are.