【英语学习】
纪伯伦诗歌《孩子》：什么是“他们是生命对于自身渴望而诞生的孩子”？
最近发在《Medium》杂志medium.com/@yong321/dba139f3ad26?sk=985709263f3a6f54517ea3686a94e720 原文中链接在此从略

Kahlil Gibran’s Poem “On Children” in Different Languages
What is “Life’s longing for itself”?

Lebanese-American poet Kahlil Gibran is a native Arabic speaker. But he wrote his poems almost exclusively in English. One of his most well known poems is “On Children”, one stanza of which reads

| Your children are not your children.
| They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
| They come through you but not from you,
| And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.

The second line is philosophical and may not be easy to understand. When it’s translated into other languages, some translators choose to alter the text to make it slightly more understandable. Here are some examples:

(1) French:
Ils sont les fils et les filles de l’appel de la Vie à elle-même,
(literally: They are the sons and the daughters of the call of the Life to itself)

(2) Spanish:
Son los hijos y las hijas de la llamada de la vida a sí misma.
(literally: They are the sons and the daughters of the call of the life to itself)

(3) Spanish:
Son hijos e hijas del anhelo de la Vida por sí misma.
(literally: They are sons and daughters of the longing of the Life for itself)

(4) Spanish:
Son los hijos y las hijas de la Vida
que quiere seguir dando Vida.
(literally: They are the sons and the daughters of the Life
that wants to continue giving Life)

(5) German:
Sie sind die Söhne und Töchter der Sehnsucht des Lebens nach sich selbst.
(literally: They are the sons and daughters of longing of life for itself)

(6) Italian:
sono figli e le figlie della vita stessa.
(literally: they are sons and the daughters of the life itself)

(7) Chinese:
他们是生命对于自身渴望而诞生的孩子
(literally: They are the children born out of Life’s longing for itself)

We see that the second Spanish translation (3), using the word anhelo, the German translation (5), using Sehnsucht, and the Chinese translation (7), using 渴望, literally translate the word longing in Gibran’s poem. The French translation (1), using appel, and the first Spanish translation (2), using llamada, change the original longing to “call” or “calling”. The third Spanish translation (4) and the Italian translation (6) seem to be unhappy with the poetic language and opt to plainly say the words to the readers.

Why this diversity in translation? What does this line really mean? It’s actually not that hard. This line, plainly paraphrased, means that the children are the offspring or outcome of the longing of Life for itself. Here Life is like a thing, a being, an entity as if it existed in space and time. It tries to find itself, and in the process, are born the children who appear to belong to you, the addressee of the author. “Life’s longing for itself”, in this context about human procreation, simply means that life intends to reproduce life, just as the plain, “prosaic” third Spanish translation (4) is saying, and in a corrupted and equally insipid way the Italian translation (6) is saying. Changing “longing” to “calling” is not right, because they are different actions; when you long for something, you don’t necessarily call out. For this reason, I consider either of the approaches, i.e. either changing a key word or plainly interpreting the poetic line, mistranslation of a poem. A literal translation of this particular word longing in the case of the second Spanish translation (3), the German translation (5), and the Chinese translation (7), is appropriate.

The third line of this stanza is deceivingly simple, and warrants interpretation as well in the sequel to this article.

( I’m a language lover. For other mistranslations I have documented, please see http://t.cn/AXMOhCJA )