给失去⾃⼰的朋友们
给失去⾃⼰的朋友们
爱多么麻烦
眼睁睁看⻅
抓⼜抓不住
抓住了⼜跑掉
应该是春天了
什么都在发芽
乱糟糟 催情剂
唉唉唉唉
电话⾥说不清楚
to lost friends
love is such a bother
you look on helpless
grasp but can’t hold
hold but it slips away
it must be springtime
everything is a
mess of buds dose of lust
ay ay ay ay
you can’t explain on the phone
to friends who have lost themselves
gěi shī qù zì jǐ de péng you men
to friends who have lost themselves
ài duō me má fan
love is such [trouble/bother/a nuisance]
yǎn zhēng zhēng kàn jiàn
see with eyes wide open
zhuā yòu zhuā bú zhù
catch but canʼt hold
zhuā zhù le yòu pǎo diào
hold but it escapes
yīng gāi shì chūn tiān le
it must be springtime
shén me dū zài fā yá
everything is in bud
luàn zāo zāo cuī qíng jì
chaos | aphrodisiac
āi āi āi āi
ah ah ah ah
diàn huà lǐ shuì bù qīng chu
canʼt explain over the phone
In this workshop we were lucky to have both guest translator Dave Haysom and Xiao An’s friend and fellow Chengdu resident Yu Yoyo guiding the workshop’s collaborative translation (Yoyo’s first English translation ‘My Tenantless Body‘ by Dave and poet AK Blakemore has recently been published). Yoyo explained that Xiao’s work is particularly special as it seems to be free of all artifice and yet to remove any part would break it. We noted immediately that the language was both colloquially light and emotionally resonant and tried to capture the quicksilver transitions between childlike or deliberately light expressions (‘mess of buds’ or ‘such a bother’) and the sighing weight of adult themes (‘ay ay ay ay / you can’t explain on the phone’).
From the title we were warned that the sense would often face two directions. We could choose to make the bridge-translation (‘to friends who have lost themselves’) either an address to friends who have been lost themselves or to friends who have lost the speaker. We opted to leave in the ambiguity and go for ‘to lost friends’.