想吃太阳
想吃太阳
想吃春天的太阳
想吃太阳的能量
你好贪婪，脸都吃红了
⾦圆圈，银圆圈
吃了这边太阳再吃那边太阳
⼈以后要永生
you want to eat the sun
you want to eat the spring sun
you want to eat the sun’s energy
such gluttony, to eat your face red
gold corona, silver corona
eat a sun today and one tomorrow
and live forever
want to eat the sun
xiǎng chī tài yang
want to eat the sun
xiǎng chī chūn tiān de tài yang
want to eat the spring sun
xiǎng chī tài yang de néng liàng
want to eat the sunʼs power
nǐ hǎo tān lán liǎn dū chī hóng le
so greedy, you eat your face red
jīn yuán quān yín yuán juān
gold rings, silver rings
chī le zhè biān tài yang zài chī nà bian tài yang
eating a sun over here and then over there
rén yǐ hòu yāo yǒng shēng
a person will live forever
For this workshop, guest translator, Dave Haysom, was joined by Xiao An’s friend the poet Yu Yoyo (whose collection My Tenantless Body has been translated by Dave and AK Blakemore). We struggled with the tone of the poem, whether there was judgement implied in the greed of the consumer eating up the sun. Yoyo suggested that this wasn’t the case and so we tempered some of the more judgemental options that had been proposed (‘on a diet of suns / you’ll live forever’).
In translating the lines ‘gold rings, silver rings’ we wanted to capture the sense of light hallowing the sun and one of the participants suggested ‘corona’ the name for an eclipse that produces this feature.