Lift Me Up!
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!