My Mother’s Cotton Flowers / Zhang Fanxiu

[Lake]

My Mother’s Cotton Flowers

Cotton flowers chat only to my mother
who teaches the green bolls, dumb
for the whole summer, to open their mouths.
Back bent, she picks up sentences
one by one, and dries them on the branches.

Once they talk, the flowers bloom.
Their tongues that have tasted the sweetness
surround mother’s bosom
like spoiled children trying to cling to her.

Watching mother in the flower clusters, moving
inch by inch, I hear in her hands
the most tender whispers.


母亲的棉花
-张凡修


棉花的话，只说给母亲，一个人听
哑了一个夏天的青桃，母亲教它们开口
弯着腰，一句句打捞，晾在枝杈上

花朵一说话它就开放。一只只尝到甜头的舌头
拱着母亲的胸脯。仿佛一群撒娇的孩子
争着抢着与母亲亲昵

看着母亲在花丛中，一遍又一遍地挪动
我听见了，落进母亲手中的呢喃
是这个世界上最轻柔的

[twoleftfeet]

Lake,

What a tender poem.

I have only two small observations.

1) maybe you could shorten "cotton bolls" to just "bolls" ?

2) "their tongues that have tasted the sweet"
Is there a noun missing after the adjective "sweet" or maybe it's "the sweetness"?

Nice one
Geoff

[Lake]

Hi Geoff,

Long time no see. Glad to see you back!

These are very good observations, I'll take your suggestions and have it corrected.

Thanks much!

Lake

[twoleftfeet]

Lake,

Yes indeed

Hao Jiu Bu Jian

I love these poems - keep feeding me

Geoff

[Lake]

Hao Jiu Bu Jian

This is...this is ... fantastic!

[Elphin]

Lake

Where have you been? I have missed these delights. This is a beautiful evocative poem.

I liked the use of the rather old fashioned "bosom" - very appropriate. Having said that these lines were the only ones that came across prosaically.

surround mother’s bosom
like spoiled children trying to cling to her.

I have no alternatives but wonder about surround and trying to cling in particular. The image created is a great one though.

cheers

elph

[Lake]

Hello Elphin,

Nice to see you again. Missed your crits, too. I've been on vacation for three weeks in China, survived H1N1.

I'm not satisfied with the lines you commented either. I couldn't find the exact words to translate these, so I just did a kind of free translation. I'm stuck here. But I'll keep thinking about it to see if there's anything that'll pop up later.

Many thanks!

Lake

[David]

Lovely, Lake. Very nice to see you back, especially after your brush with HIN1. (Sounds nasty.)

I obviously can't quibble about the accuracy of the translation, which is what I normally do to translations when I can, so let me just say that I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Cheers

David

[Lake]

Thanks David, you're always encouraging.

I obviously can't quibble about the accuracy of the translation, which is what I normally do to translations when I can,

Accuracy, so it is your fundamental consideration in translation?

Cheers,

Lake

[David]

Accuracy, so it is your fundamental consideration in translation?

What a good question. Not necessarily, I suppose, but you have to remain loyal to something, even if it's only (only!) the spirit of the original.

Don't you agree? (See, I'm asking the questions now.)

[Lake]

Not necessarily, I suppose, but you have to remain loyal to something, even if it's only (only!) the spirit of the original.

Don't you agree? (See, I'm asking the questions now.)

I can't agree more with you on the spirit of the original.

This made me feel I've asked a stupid question. One standard of good translation proposed by a translator is - loyalty, coherence and elegance.
Another's theory in translation is the translated version should be larger than the original, that is 1+1=3, so called optimization. I don't know.

Talking about loyalty alone, there are issues of being loyal to words, phrases, sentence structures and styles...

Right now I can only try to make the translated version readable.

[David]

It's readable already! Silly!