China and the West

Letter from Amy Lowell to John Gould Fletcher ; 16 Aug. (1919). [About her work with Florence Ayscough].
We have found out something which has never yet been taken into consideration by the translators of Chinese poetry, namely, that the nuances, the shadings of expression are found in the roots of the characters. Our method is that she makes a translation direct fom the Chinese, an absolutely literal one, and she not only gives the equivalents of the signs, but all their roots. Then I take it and work out something as nearly like the original as possible. She again compares with the original, and between us we arrive at something she says, from her knowledge of the language, is practically exact. This discovery should knock out Ezra [Pound]'s translations completely, as far as their resemblance to the originals is concerned, for his were made from Fenollosa transcripts of Japanese translations. I do not claim that these translations are any better as poems, nor perhaps as good as Ezra's, but they are much more faithful.