China and the West

Liang Shiqiu übersetzt William Shakespeare.
Liang Shiqiu was the first Chinese who translated the complete plays of William Shakespeare in the vernacular Chinese prose style, except that he also included rhymed couplets in his translation.
Er schreibt 1952 : "My translations were entirely in prose style. To be honest, I was not able to take the rhythms of Shakespeare's poetry into account. I really felt that it was already difficult enough if I was able to express the full and accurate meaning of the original. I was somewhat enlightened by Percy Simpson's Shakespeare's punctuation. It seems that Shakespeare did not use punctuation marks in the standard way but had a system of his own. His aim was to guide his actors and actresses in the recitation of their lines and enable them to reproduce these lines with the right cadence. I decided, therefore, to do my best in my translations to keep Shakespeare's original puncuation system intact. The consequence is that with every line in the original text there will be a line of translation ; in other words, I have taken sentences as my translation units. Of course, it will not be a literal translation, for word-for-word translation will result in total incomprehensibility ; nor will it be a mere translation of meaning, for such a translation, eloquent and fluent as it is, will be too far removed from the tone and the rhythm of the original. I am not sure if the sentence-for-sentence approach I have adopted will be able to retain more or less the original rhythmic pattern."
Bai Liping : Liang tries to present Shakespeare seriously and meticulously. In order to fully understand Shakespeare, he took great pains to obtain all the available reference books on Shakespeare. When he translated, he supplied annotations to help readers understand the Bard. Therefore, Liang not only criticizes, but also provides constructive solutions ; he not only preaches, but also acts - in this sense, he is a translator with the virtues of both 'de' and 'xing'. Before his version of each play, there is a detailed introduction to the play's historical background, the source of its story, records of its various performances. Sometimes they also include Liang's own commentaries. The foreword gives a list of his translation principles, but this does not contain a reference to performance on the stage. He thinks that plays, including Shakespeare's, can exist independently of the stage, and can be either suitable or unsuitable for the stage.