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Dan Duffy <dduffy@email.unc.edu>
date Nov 24, 2006 6:22 AM
subject [Vsg] Kieu translations
Hi all,
Eric Henry has agreed to speak to our local Yale Club book group next
April 1, for a meeting on Truyen Kieu.
Eric has written on the nom verse novel genre to which Kieu belongs, and
is eloquent about the poem's place in Vietnamese and world culture. The
discussants are graduates of a college that deliberately produces
nationally-oriented local elites.
We'll all have read the book. It is going to be great: scarred and
balding American adults in positions of authority talking about a
Vietnamese poem.
I am wondering what English translation to recommend. My default is
Huynh Sanh Thong's.
Diane Fox pointed out to me some time ago that his version for Vintage,
a commercial press, swings more freely than the subsequent Yale
University Press bilingual edition. So I'll recommend those two.
But as I look on Amazon and on Bookfinder, where the readers will go for
their copies, I see that there are a few others. (We all look forward
to John Balaban's version, but that is still in progres.)
Any recommendations?
Dan
T. Nguyen <nguyenthanhbl@yahoo.com>
date Nov 24, 2006 9:02 AM
subject Re: [Vsg] Kieu translations
Hi Dan,
Le Xuan Thuy's English version of Kieu is another
worthy work for Eric to review. The version of Thuy's
translation that I have was published by Nha Xuat Ban
Van Hoc in 1999.
Cheers,
Thanh
Dan Duffy <dduffy@email.unc.edu>
subject Re: [Vsg] Kieu translations
mailed-by mailman1.u.washington.edu
The other version that pops up on top of the Amazon list is by Vladislav
Borisovich Zhukov.
Anyone know him? Read it? Is it readable and respectable?
I would like to have several versions read, as long as each is readable.
A long poem with numbered lines is one situation where a group can
proceed easily with variant versions. So all can benefit from different
choices.
There are a lot more Kieu translations in ms. than in print, by the way.
Translating that poem is something people like to do. Nguyen Huy
Thiep's short stories take people the same way.
George Dutton <dutton@humnet.ucla.edu>
date Nov 24, 2006 10:10 AM
subject Re: [Vsg] Kieu translations
Hi Dan,
Glad you found the Zhukov translation, I was about to suggest it. Somewhere, (JSEAS?) I saw a very positive review of it by Keith Taylor. I have a copy, which I haven't read yet. It is largely unannotated as far as I recall - just an unadorned translation.
George
Dan Duffy <dduffy@email.unc.edu>
date Nov 24, 2006 12:07 PM
subject Re: [Vsg] Kieu translations
Thanks, George. I'm not surprised to hear it's real work, since the
formerly Soviet VN humanist scholars, if Zhukov is one of them, are so
cultivated.
Now if I could just beam Keith in for twenty minutes. One time I have
most connected to that poem, which to me frankly reads like Perils of
Pauline, was following him through the nom of the initial scene of
invocation.
Otherwise I only really get Kieu when people quote me a line apropos of
something happening around us. I suspect others may also have trouble
seeing why people like the poem so much.
I'm going to see if I can get a talented videographer to record Eric's
session with the Yale club, to see if we can edit something useful for
others.
Dan
Eric Henry <henryhme@bellsouth.net>
date Nov 25, 2006 3:39 PM
subject Re: [Vsg] Kieu translations
Another translation, much peddled (in a The Gioi bilingual edition)
on the streets of downtown Hanoi, is by Michael Counsell, an
Englishman. He uses alternate six and eight syllable lines with end-
rhyme. This approach leads (as do all approaches) to undesirable
compromises, but it does allow the author to communicate something of
the verbal pace and style of the original. The text is accompanied by
some rather nice black-and-white brush illustrations. Le Xuan Thuy's
version, I regret to say, seems just about unreadable to me. I
haven't seen the Zhukov translation. Of the translations I know,
Huynh Sanh Thong's scores highest, as far as I can judge. -- E.H.
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