認影
我又回到老地方
椅子愈來愈舒適了
頃刻暗掉的冷空氣
與音效八方包裹你
跟盯住你的目光一起
化成牆紙
只有停下來的影子是真實
這就叫安全
現實一切都不重要了
觀眾不會生老病死
你在的地方不需要電影了嗎
沒戲院何以安身豈言立命?
沒跟過漆黑的陌生人
搓捏談情如何長成
有影子的人
但你不再需要影了
暫借的安慰為何不散
在你我贖回影子的一點
驟暗忽明中曾經彼此相認
Electric Shadows
again I go back to the old place
the chairs are more and more comfortable
the chilled air, instantly dimmed,
and the acoustic that wraps you from eight sides
together with the gaze gazing at you
all turn into wallpaper
only the shadows that stop are real
we call this safety
nothing about reality is important now
the audience won’t age or die
do they not need movies where you are
without cinemas how can you settle down let alone be content?
without having fumbled with any stranger in the dark
or talked of love how can we grow up to be
people with shadows
why doesn’t the borrowed comfort fade
we knew each other in the sudden dark and bright
of you and me buying back our shadows
Recognising (pronounced: ying) shadows/films (pronounced: ying)
I went back to the old place
the chairs are getting more and more comfortable
the cold air that instantly dimmed
and the acoustic wraps you from eight sides
together with the gaze staring at you
it turns into wallpaper
only the shadows that stop are real
this is safety
nothing about reality is important any longer
the audience won’t [go through life’s stages/grow old get sick and die]
does where you are not need cinemas any more
without cinemas how can you settle down to say nothing of being content
without having, with any stranger in the darkness,
kneaded or talked of love how can we grow up to be
people with shadows
but you no longer need a shadow/film
why doesn’t the temporarily borrowed comfort fade
in the sudden darkness and brightness of
your and my ransoming our shadows we used to recognise/know each other
Yau Ching is a filmmaker as well as poet, so it seemed appropriate we chose this poem set in the cinema for our translation session. The literal translator Chenxin Jiang began by telling us about the playful title which translates roughly as recognising (pronounced: ying) shadows/films (pronounced: ying). Should we also aim for a pun? Should we try and include
both the ideas of shadows and cinema? The solution only came near the very end, when one of the group told us that the word for cinema literally translates as ‘electric shadows’ – what a wonderful evocative phrase. And one that implies recognition – the shadows are charged, they have an energy and are perhaps even dangerous. There was also much discussion about the fumbling. The closest Chenxin Jiang could get to the original was ‘kneaded’ – she believed the line was meant to suggest teenagers grasping sweaty palms in the darkness. But we thought ‘kneaded’ sounded a bit too grossly sexual in the English (and also risked looking like a typo). Fumbling was as close as we could get to an
English expression that implied mutual, youthful touching!
Clare Pollard