Translating literature is a delicate art. That is probably the understatement of the epoch. No one language has much of a one to one correspondence for any given word or idea. In fact, interpreting ideas is a much better description of what a literary translator does and it is fraught with peril.
The mistaken belief by the majority of people that such a one to one correspondence of meanings is why so many mistranslated signs and tattoos exist. I have no problem with this because it is a source of endless amusement to me and serves as an outward indication of the person's character especially when it comes to tattoos. Google Translate will continue to be the flame that immolates monolingual moths hilariously. Seriously folks, find an adult before you attempt that foreign language ad campaign or permanently inscribe upon your flesh absolute gibberish, an insult or a common menu item.
Here's something interesting to do on a rainy day: Look for a word in your native language in another language. Choose something that is distant in relation. Instead of looking up something German, which is a near relative of English, try Spanish which is a bit more distant. Further still is Hindi but these are all part of the Indo-European family so they continue to still have some commonalities between them. No, go far afield and look up the meaning of a an English word in, say, Mandarin. That's good and distant.
For this exercise, let's find the Mandarin word for a female horse, specifically the word mare. Should be easy, right? You are so very terribly wrong.
The best dictionary for Mandarin is MDGB, I think. Here's their results for "mare". Not so easy, eh? Feeling a bit overwhelmed by choice, yes? Did you really mean a mare, or did you mean a jenny, which is a female donkey? Why does "mare" by itself have three separate entries spelled different ways with no other explanation? The two idioms presented are actually pretty cool but you need to focus right now! Oh how to differentiate! You need a mare and you don't want to ask for the wrong beast and you hate shopping as it is. What to do?
Try this: Do a Google Image search on the three most likely options, 騋 (lái), 騍馬 (kèmǎ) and 牸馬 (zìmǎ). What do you see? 騋 has some calligraphy, a lot of things about weddings and some paintings of horses. 騍馬 has many images of horses and a few other peculiar things so maybe this is the right one? 牸馬 just seems all kinds of incoherent so that must not be right. You settle on 騍馬 because that conveys the idea of horses the best so a fine 騍馬 for you!
But there's one problem with that. 騍馬 is mostly associated with geldings; A fixed stallion. That's not what you wanted. You're trying to make more horses so this simply will not do Farmer McGregor! What about 牸馬? That's correct in that it literally means "female of the horse species" but something is weird about that interpretation. It sounds a bit clinical, doesn't it? It's certainly seems over precise but it will likely get you what you want at market and it will certainly make you sound like a foreigner. The horse traders will laugh at you while taking your money and you can't understand what they're saying. Your easily bruised ego could likely cause you to make a scene and you wouldn't want that now would you? So I guess you're looking for a 騋.
You are finally correct. Why? Because that is what a Chinese farmer calls a mare when he's talking about female horses with other farmers while enjoying a cold one at the local watering hole. Pure and simple. But you didn't know that, did you? In fact, if you had read the web results of those image searches you would have, 1, been reading for a long time, 2, probably ended up trying to confirm the meaning in another dictionary and 3, because you're so clever and well rounded for a horse breeder, dove into some literary sources until you found at least three cross references that lead back to the same accepted meaning in different online dictionaries because horses, dammit.
Now imagine you have a PhD in Song Dynasty literature and your job is on the line because you haven't published in forever and you need tenure desperately because you'll be damned if you'll work as a barista again. Sadly, being a literary PhD also means you barely know much actual Chinese at all. Never mind the old literary dialect of Luoyang Han which most classical Chinese literature and religious & philosophical text is written in. You're just dimly aware of the differences between modern Mandarin and Cantonese and that is mostly because of your dining habits. (Insert a language here) Studies, anyone?
So you pull together some sources, some old and some modern, and begin the tedious task of basically looking up every Hanzi and comparing them to the various other translations and notice that they vary widely, their meanings similar but diverse. You begin to wonder if it's not too late or too expensive to get an MBA. That would at least stop all the sighing your parents do when you go to visit, usually because you're always broke. This is where the fun begins.
Let's use a recent example of my own. This is an untitled poem by Buddhist nun Miaozong (1095-1170).
一葉扁舟泛渺茫
呈橈舞棹別宫商
雲山海月都扼卻
赢得壯周蝶夢長
One translation I rather like is by Beata Grant and appears in her wonderful book Daughters of Emptiness, 2003 Wisdom Publications. I highly recommend reading it because it is just wonderful.
A leaf of a boat drifts across the endless
expanse of water,
Lifting and dancing the oars to a different
melody now.
Clouds on the mountain, moon over the sea:
all tossed away;
This done, Zhuang Zhou's butterfly dream
will last forever.
If you look up the meaning of all the Hanzi in this poem, you might start to get lost and realize that Mandarin, like English, has a long history with lots of changes over time and many words for saying the same thing as well as many homophones that have little to do with each other. What? You thought this would be easy?
Grant's translation is a lot closer to the meaning meant at the time it was written. This is one of many contextual choices a translator must make. Do we want a modern translation or do we want to preserve the historical meaning? Both are available and are important to students, researchers and casual enthusiasts. This is why when you go to get a copy of Beowulf, you'll be faced with easily a dozen choices. Are you an English major who needs a historical perspective? Maybe you're studying linguistics and you want to see the drift between Anglo Saxon and modern English or perhaps this is just required reading for your literature class so you just need something more modern. Why do the critical editions cost hundreds of dollars? (Answer: Because they do!) Again, you're overwhelmed by choices.
Personally, I prefer to do modern interpretations but I want to play up the religious and philosophical meaning. I'm also a stickler for as remaining as close to the raw translation as possible. This can be problematic and here's why:
A single leaf like small boat floats remotely.
Presented as dancing arms, the oars depart harmoniously.
Clouded mountain, moonlit sea; All holding nevertheless;
Winning Zhuang Zhou's butterfly dream forever.
What just happened? Is one of us just not very good at Mandarin? Those are way too different in meaning so one of us must be wrong, right? Well, no. We're both correct, actually. The exact meaning will not be lost on a native speaker of Mandarin, no, not at all. But that's the problem: We're translating for an English audience and the subtleties of Mandarin, classical and modern, leave a lot of room for interpretation. Here's what Grant and I are working with: I give you the raw modern translation.
Not so pretty is it? So many meanings for a few phrases and even single words. Did you know Mandarin is tenseless? The verbs do not conjugate for time, number or gender so you have to derive that by context. Articles like "the" or "a" aren't really used though a notion of them exists. Some words have very extensive meanings. Also, Chinese orthography makes it difficult for a non-native speaker to notice that some individual Hanzi combine to make unique ideas of their own. There are also conventions in English that further cloud the issue like "A leaf of a boat" versus "A single leaf like boat". While similar, those phrases don't mean exactly the same thing. Grant is more literary whereas I'm more philosophical.
About the only solace you can have in an undertaking like this is that roughly, for the most part, Mandarin tends to follow the familiar word order of subject verb object though that isn't set in stone. Idioms, allusions and metaphors are another headache. This simple 28 word, 4 line poem could keep even the most seasoned translator/interpreter busy for hours & hours. The words 宫商 could be read as Shang Palace (do the Google Image search thing again on these and prepare to be confused) but you'll notice we both went with a musical reference because what they have in common is that they are the words for the first and second note in a pentatonic scale, respectively. That right there is a major contextual clue. Grant chose "melody" for her own reasons, I chose "harmoniously" because most public school systems in the US teach children with pentatonic scales as an introduction to both the concept of musical harmony and because it's hard to make an off key note on Orff instruments like xylophones and bells. This is an example of the considerations that have to be taken into account as well as the biases and personal aesthetics of the translator.
This is true of all translation work between all languages. Truly a baroque babbling bedlam of punctilious prose provisioning.
Translate that line into Mandarin while preserving the sentiment without losing the intended effect of the alliteration.