As I dip my toes into learning Mandarin, I’ve come to realize just how difficult and valuable the art of translation is. Especially when it comes to the linguistic metamorphosis of converting a character-based language into an alphabetical one. Something translator and writer Yilin Wang does with precision and grace in her debut book, The Lantern and the Night Moths. Wang takes us by the hand to meet modern and contemporary Chinese poets Qiu Jin, Zhang Qiaohui, Fei Ming, Xiao Xi, and Dai Wangshu by providing annotated translations of 5-6 of their poems in respective sections. She faithfully retains each of their distinct writing styles, voices and insights by employing techniques like glossing where brief descriptors are added to nouns to hint at the original work’s sociopolitical context. This translator’s staple is explained in further detail in her essay, “On Xiao Xi: The Infinite Possibilities of Poetry Translation.” In fact, each poet’s section is accompanied by a personal essay Wang penned in conversation with their work. Often elaborating on thematic overlaps between her lived experience and those of the poets’. Translation, in and of itself, is an intimate act but it is through these prose pieces that we are afforded an even deeper glimpse into Wang’s own world and worldviews.
Qiu Jin, the queer feminist revolutionary is their literary zhīyīn, a Chinese term that roughly means kindred spirits with the same ideals. With Zhang Qiaohui, what is shared between all three of us is Chinese diasporic yearning and an interconnectedness to the land. While Fei Ming’s dreamlike ambiguity and meditative wisdom taught Wang, who passes along to us, the power of what is unsaid. How to appreciate the emotional resonance of emptiness as expansive rather than lacking. Lastly, in “On Dai Wangshu, Poetry is What Survives Translation,” she advocates for its increased importance in the publishing industry, following in his globetrotting translator’s footsteps. For it is only through the work of dedicated translators bringing knowledge back with all its cultural, historical, and intersectional context intact, that existing worldviews can be expanded. Like how my mind was blown by Dai Wanghsu’s line, “I think therefore I am a butterfly,” which playfully entwines the Cartesian logic of seventeenth century French enlightenment with the Daoist philosophy of China’s late 4th century BC. Now, back to practicing my pinyin alphabet and tones.
— Léa Taranto is a disabled, Chinese Jewish Canadian writer whose novel, A Drop in the Ocean, is about living in psychiatric care for OCD and comorbidities. An MFA graduate from UBC and Writer’s Studio alumnus, she resides on traditional, unceded Halkomelem and Squamish territories in BC. Leataranto.com.
You can read Léa Taranto's story "Dear Great Uncle John " in Issue 304 (Summer Creative Nonfiction 2025). Order the issue now:
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