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Lift Me Up!

Peter Kam Fai Cheung SBS

In the 1980s, I took translation (English-Chinese) as one of my career options. I enrolled with the UK Institute of Linguists and got its Final Diploma (Legal Translation) in 1987. I applied my capability in the 1990s to check if the Chinese translation of copyright stuff was good or not.

While listening to a Chinese radio program, I heard the host reciting in passing poetic lines depicting Spring-Autumn, Summer-Winter:

"春有百花秋有月,

夏有涼風冬有雪;"

They were music to my ears and so I mined their origin and discovered they were written by a Zen Master 無門慧開 ("Doorless Door Wittily Open" - my translation) (1183-1260). Furthermore, the poet's deep message is in the un-recited third and fourth lines about how to characterize a good season:

"若無閑事挂心頭,

便是人間好時節."

"How can I share the beauty of this poem with the English-only audience?" I pondered.

I tried Google Translate. The following were the results:

"There are flowers and autumn months in spring,

Summer cool wind winter snow;

If you have no time to worry about,

It is a good time on earth."

That was the best the deep-learning neural machine translation in full context could do - good news to human translators!

Thinking good, I attempted to resolve the challenge myself. Maintaining the pulse and echo of the poem, I came up with:

"Spring flowers, Autumn moon;

Cool Summer, snowy Winter.

Enlightened the way things are -

That's our good seasonal tune."

Awakening from my earthy slumber, the good seasonal tune has lift me up!


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