Role: Translator

Myth, Sound, and Register: Translating Rimbaud

— 01

Abstract

This section presents a Chinese translation of an excerpt from Rimbaud's "A Season in Hell," translated from an English version of the original French — not directly from Rimbaud's French text. That translation path is worth naming upfront: a translation of a translation carries an additional layer of filtering, and part of the work here was being aware of what that filtering might have already changed before the text reached me.

— 02

Translation Approach

This excerpt moves through three distinct registers within a single piece — free verse, tightly rhymed refrain, and dense prose-poetry — and part of the work was letting each register read differently in Chinese rather than flattening them into one voice.

The piece also draws on a set of proper nouns — Solomon, the Kedron, Cimmeria — that carry real mythological and religious weight. Rather than treating these as neutral names to transliterate for sound alone, I chose characters whose own associations could reinforce the atmosphere each name was meant to carry.

— 03

A Season in Hell (excerpt)

HUNGER

If I've any taste, it's for barely
Anything but stone and slurry.
I breakfast ever on air,
Coal, iron and the rockery.
My hungers, turn. Hungers, browse
The field of sound.
Suck the gaudy venom
From the weedy ground.
Eat what's broken, pebbly,
That old religious debris;
Rocks from a past deluge,
Loaves sown in grey valleys.

饥饿

如果我有胃口，不会是为
任何事物，除去石头与淤泥。
早餐我始终进食空气，
煤矿，钢铁与岩石。
我的饥饿，旋转。饥饿，吃草
在那声音之原上。
吸吮冶丽的毒汁
从那杂草地。
吃那残缺的，多砾的，
那古老的宗庙废墟；
岩石来自一场过去的洪水，
面包播种在灰色山谷。

The fox howled in the leaves
Spitting out bright plumes
From his poultry feast:
Like him I self-consume.
The fruits and the veg
Wait only for the pickers;
But the spider in the hedge
Eats violets, no others.
Let me sleep! Let me simmer
On the fires of Solomon.
Down the rust, boiling over,
Mingling there with the Kedron.

狐狸嗥叫在树叶间
吐出夺目的翎羽
源于他自己的禽肉宴：
像他一样，我自我消耗。
水果与蔬菜
等待只为了被采摘；
但篱笆上的蜘蛛
进食紫罗兰，再无其它。
让我睡去！让我煎熬
在这所罗门之焰上。
流过铁锈，沸溢而出，
在那与科德隆河交融。

At last, O happiness, O reason, I plucked from the sky the azure, which is of blackness, and I lived, a golden spark of natural light. From joy, I adopted the most clownish exaggerated expression possible:

终于，哦，愉悦，哦，理性，我从天空摘下天蓝色，青黑的，并且我还活着，一道闪电的金光。从欢愉之中，我选取了可行的最天花乱坠的表达：

It's found we see!
What? – Eternity.
It's the sun, mingled
With the sea.

找到了！
什么？-永恒。
那是太阳，
融入海中。

My immortal soul
Keep your vow
Despite empty night
And the day's glow.

我永恒的灵魂
铭刻着你的誓言
纵使黑夜空寂
白日如焚。

Thus you'll diverge
From the mortal weal
From the common urge,
To fly as you feel...
– No hope, never,
No entreaty here.

所以你将摒弃
凡人的幸福，庸俗的欲望。
任自飞去…
-没有希望，永远没有，
没有新生。

Science and patience,
Torture is real.
No more tomorrow,
Embers of satin,
Your own ardour
The only duty.

真理与坚忍，
难逃苦刑。
再无明日，
余烬如绸，
你独自的燃情
唯一的使命。

It's found we see.
– What? – Eternity.
It's the sun, mingled
With the sea.

找到了。
-什么？-永恒。
那是太阳，
融入海中。

I became a fabulous opera: I saw that all beings are fated for happiness: activity is not life, but a way of wasting strength, an enervation. Morality is a weakness of the brain.

我成为一场恢宏的歌剧：我见证万物注定为欢愉而生：活跃不是生活，只是挥霍力量的方式，是耗费精力。道德是灵魂的懦弱。

To every being, I felt, several other lives seemed due. This gentlemen knows not what he does, he's an angel. This family is a pack of dogs. Before several men I have spoken aloud in a moment of their other lives. – Thus, have I loved a pig.

众生，依我之见，应得多种另外的生活。这位先生并不自知，他是一个天使。这个家庭是一窝子的狗。在许多人之前，我已公然提过他们另外的生活。-所以，我爱过一头猪。

None of the sophistries of madness – that madness they lock away – were forgotten by me: I could recite them all, I know the system.

没有任何源自疯狂的诡辩-他们视作禁忌的疯狂-曾被我遗忘：我能够背诵他们全部，我对他们了如指掌。

My health was threatened. Terror arrived. I fell into a slumber for several days, and, waking, continued in saddest dream. I was ripe for death, and by a perilous road my weakness led me to the confines of the world and Cimmeria, land of shadows and whirlwinds.

我的健康受到威胁。危险抵达。我经日陷入沉睡，并且，醒来，继续我最悲伤的梦。对于死亡我早已成熟，在一条充满劫难的路上，我的软弱引诱我去世界的边缘与辛梅里亚大陆，黑影与旋风的国度。

I was forced to travel, to distract myself from the enchantments thronging my brain. Over the sea, which I loved as if it were sure to cleanse me of defilement, I saw the consoling cross arise. I had been damned by the rainbow. Happiness was my fatality, my remorse, my worm: my life would forever be too immense to be devoted to strength and beauty.

我被迫远行，逃离塞满脑海的着魔。海上，我爱过它，仿佛注定将我一身污秽洗净。我见到安抚的十字架升起。我曾被彩虹罚下地狱。欢愉是我的苦难，我的忏悔与我的蛆虫：我的生命如此辽阔，以至于不能仅仅献给力与美。

Happiness! Its tooth, sweet unto death, warned me at cockcrow – ad matutinam, at Christus venit, – in the darkest cities:

欢愉！它的牙齿，甜蜜至死，在黎明警告我——清晨祷告，基督来临——在那最黑暗的城市：

O seasons, O chateaux!
Where is the flawless soul?
The magic study I pursued,
Of happiness, none can elude.

哦季节，哦城堡！
哪里存在纯洁无暇的魂魄？
我所追寻的魔法学，
与欢愉相关，无人能够避免。

A health to it, each time
The Gallic cock makes rhyme.
Ah! There's nothing I desire,
It's possessed my life entire.

向他致敬，每当
高卢雄鸡报晓的时候。
啊！我已一无所求，
它占据了我生命的全部。

That charm has taken heart and soul
Scattered all my efforts so.
O seasons, O chateaux!

这魔咒已摄取了我的心魂
夺去了我的全部精力。
哦季节，哦城堡！

The hour of its flight, alas!
Will be the hour I pass.
O seasons, O chateaux!

当它破灭之日，可惜啊！
也将是我离去之时。
哦季节，哦城堡！

That's all past. I know these days how to greet beauty.

这一切都已经过去了。如今我已学会赞颂美丽。

— 04

Choosing Sound with Intention: Transliterating Proper Nouns

Transliteration in Chinese isn't just about matching sound — the characters chosen carry their own sensory associations, and those associations can either reinforce or undercut the weight a name is meant to carry.

For Cimmeria, I chose 辛梅里亚 over the more neutral 西米利亚. 辛 carries a pungent, almost bitter sensory quality; 梅 evokes a visual, botanical image rather than serving as pure phonetic filler. Together they give the name a sensory strangeness that echoes Cimmeria's mythological identity — a realm of permanent darkness and shadow in Homeric tradition — rather than reading as a flat, arbitrary transliteration.

For Kedron, the opposite instinct applied. 科德隆 stays deliberately austere and unadorned — no character chosen for vivid imagery or warmth. Kedron is a river in biblical Jerusalem, carrying a specific, restrained religious gravity; a more evocative transliteration would have overdressed a name that's meant to feel solemn rather than strange.