Chang E -----The Lady In The Moon

Chang E

嫦 娥

云母屏风烛影深,

yun mu ping feng zhu ying shen,

长河渐落晓星沉.

chang he jian luo xiao xing chen.

嫦娥应悔偷灵药,

chang e ying hui tou ling yao

碧海青天夜夜心.

bi hai qing tian yeye xin.

English versions1: 

The lady in the moon

Behind the mica screen, in shadows deep, a candle flickers.

The Milky Way has faded, and the Morning Star decline.

Chang E must regret having stolen the magic elixir—

In that blue Ocean of a sky: endless thoughts, night after night.

Version 2: 

To the Moon Goddess

Upon the marble screen the candle-light is winking,

The Milky Way is slanting and morning stars sinking.

You’d regret to have stolen the miraculous potion,

Night after night you brood o’er the celestial ocean.

In the first line, “影” in original poem is only mentioned in the first version. In fact, “shadow” in the original poem doesn’t truly mean “shadow” in English in that shadow is formed when the light can not pass through the object. In the original poem, no other object is mentioned, so “shadow” is the light of the flicker of the candle.

The second line adds gloom and upset to the desolation. “渐(gradual)” is very important because it implies that the poet is awake all night. The first version uses present perfect which has changed the intent of the poet while the second employs the present progressive that better conveys the underlying meaning.

As for the third line, the poet associates himself with Chang E—the goddess in the moon in that they both pursue noble and unsullied spirit yet exacerbate the loneliness and distress. The second version is stating in the tone as if the poet was communicating with Chang E—“you’d regret to…”, which is more likely to blame rather than compare himself to her.

In the last line, the poet compares the sky to a blue sea (“碧海”) which is very vivid. “碧海”and “青天” are in fact the same image of the vast sky. “Blue ocean”and “sky” in the first version are to display the images in the original poem, understandable and very loyal. “Celestial ocean” used in the second version, meaning “of heaven; divine”, presents the      original images well while leaving readers vast room for imagination.

In this seven-character quatrain (七言绝句), the rhyme is /en/ in pinyin (though the last character is end up with /in/, they are actually the same in ancient times), and is in conformity with the “aaba”, the most popular rhyme scheme. The first version does not apply rhyme since the rhymes of the four lines are all different (/s/, /n/, /ex/and /t/), so it has failed to present the sound beauty of the original poem in this sense. 

Classical Chinese poetry has its distinct beauty of form in that Chinese characters are  all the same in size, making the poem orderly and beautiful, which is impossible to realize in English. As a result, the basic standard of the form beauty is to keep the translated version of a poem conforming to the original poem in terms of the number of lines. The two versions all have all retained the form of four lines, loyal to the original poem.