Departing from the analysis of the essay ”Some thoughts on translating poetry“, written in 1922 by Mao Dun – an important Chinese writer and promoter of the so called New Literature in China –, this article invites the reader to reflect on the concept of Platonic translation (Berman, 2007) practiced by translators of Western poetry into Chinese in the context of the New Culture Movement in China. Given the remarkably different origins of Chinese and Indo-European languages, we depart from the principle that it is impossible (or remotely possible) to recreate the acoustic effects of verses from one language (western) into another (Chinese) and vice versa, and because of that semantic translation (or translation according to sense) is dominant.

https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/scientia/article/view/30274

  DOI: https://doi.org/10.5007/%25x