Harvard University professor and Vietnamese poet with project to translate Tale of Kieu into English

'The Tale of Kieu' is a classic Vietnamese literary work that has been translated into English by many translators, but a Vietnamese poet, an American professor and an American poet still decided to take the effort to carry out the project of translating this work. Why?

This afternoon, November 20, at Hoa Sen University, there was an exchange and sharing session about the masterpiece of Vietnamese literature, The Tale of Kieu by the great poet Nguyen Du, with guest speakers being Professor John Stauffer, lecturer of the Faculty of Literature at Harvard University and poet - translator Nguyen Do. These are 2 of the 3 main translators of the project to translate The Tale of Kieu into English, edited by poet Nguyen Do.

Sharing his feelings about Truyen Kieu, Professor John Stauffer said: "The greatest beauty of Truyen Kieu lies in its language, a language full of music and aesthetic elements, which has the power to transform readers, making us think about ourselves in new ways and expanding our ability to empathize with others."

Professor John Stauffer (left) and poet Nguyen Do (middle) share about the project of translating The Tale of Kieu into English.

PHOTO: THANH HUY

According to Professor John Stauffer, if you read The Tale of Kieu long enough, understand it well enough, and absorb it well enough, you will see many lives in it with values, stories about faith in destiny. "It reflects the tragedies that people have to face. But it is the process of overcoming destiny, fighting against the feeling of helplessness before fate, that brings the profound human value of the work."

He also emphasized the cyclical nature of the story: once finished reading, one is compelled to return to the beginning, a characteristic of all great works.

At the meeting, poet and translator Nguyen Do said that the project to translate Truyen Kieu into English consisted of four members, three of whom were responsible for the translation: poet Nguyen Do, professor Stauffer and American poet Paul Hoover.

Students of Hoa Sen University listen to a Harvard University professor's sharing about The Tale of Kieu

PHOTO: MY QUYEN

According to poet Nguyen Do, he has long had the intention of carrying out this project because he believes that previous translations of the Tale of Kieu are not really good, and that there is a new version that only "retells the Tale of Kieu in English" and is not a translation.

"We started in March and expect to complete the translation of more than 33,000 verses in 2 years. The reason it takes so much time and effort is because this is a large work with many ancient, metaphorical sentences, not to mention containing cultural elements... The translation team must carefully read the original text, compare it with other Vietnamese texts...", translator Nguyen Do informed.

He continued: "I translated the first version and sent it to my colleague, poet Paul Hoover, to read, then to Professor Stauffer. We did a closed loop like that more than once. There were details that we argued with each other for days. For example, the sentence 'even though we are apart, my heart still has its threads', it was very difficult to translate into English while expressing all the poetic meaning and emotions of the poem, so we had to debate quite a lot."

It is known that up to now, the project of translating Tale of Kieu into English by poet Nguyen Do and his colleagues has been 60-70% completed.

Nguyen Do is a Vietnamese poet and translator born in 1959, currently living in the US. Before coming to the US to study English and journalism in 1999, he was a literature teacher at a high school in Pleiku ( Gia Lai ) and then lived in Ho Chi Minh City.

Poet Nguyen Do has published 13 collections of poetry, such as Ben Ca and Chieu Thu (with poet Thanh Thao, 1988), Khong Trong ( Vietnam Writers Association Publishing House, 1991), Bong Toi Moi (Vietnam Writers Association Publishing House, 2009)...

Together with American poet Paul Hoover, he edited and translated the anthology of contemporary Vietnamese poetry into English; translated the Anthology of Poetry by Nguyen Trai into English and poems by famous American poets such as Allen Ginsberg, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams... into Vietnamese.

Nguyen Do's poems and translations have been published in many anthologies and in American and international poetry magazines. In 2005, he received a grant from the Poetry Foundation of New York City for his contributions to world poetry. In 2016, he was selected by the Southeast Asian Global Newspaper as one of the five best poets in Southeast Asia.

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/harvard-professor-and-vietnamese-poet-with-project-to-translate-traditional-tales-into-anh-185251120200945915.htm