Monday, December 20, 2010

Requested to translate a poem

> Hi there, a friend of mine gave me your email as a way to
> translate Chinese to English.  I have attached a picture.
> Can you help?

This is a poem. So my translation may be crude by the literary standard. It goes like this:

The eagle flies, the tiger roars, resonating in the river and mountains
Deep valley, sound of tide, a whole night's wind
High flying eagle, ferocious tiger, have great ambitions

by Zhang Baiyun
in early winter of year XX (maybe 1963?)

I'm not quite sure of the first of the two letters representing the year. If it's 癸, the year may be 1963 or any year matching the formula: 1963-60*n (i.e. 1963 minus 60 times n), where n is an integer. (Ref)

The three seals all bear the name of the calligrapher (possibly author too)

Normally, a poem should have four lines. I don't know why this Mr/Ms Zhang only had three.