Controversy over vulgar Tagore translation

Responding to the controversy, Feng told news portal www.thepaper.cn that there should be no golden standard to decide the merit of a translation.

"I believe in my sincerity of translation and my Chinese and English levels," he said."True gold fears no fire."

He said he intentionally added his personal style into the translation instead of mechanically representing the original work.

First introduced to China in the 1920s by prominent writer Zheng Zhenduo, "Stray Birds" has been translated several times and is widely popular among Chinese readers. Zheng's version has always been regarded as the most authoritative, faithfully presenting Tagore's style.

Feng's translation has also triggered a discussion over the rules of translation. For decades, the three principles "faithfulness," "expressiveness," and "elegance," proposed at the beginning of the 20th century by famous translator Yan Fu, have been widely held as the golden rules among Chinese translators.

Ma Ainong, famous for her successful translation of "Harry Potter," said a good translation should be faithful to the original work, both in terms of language and style.

"Faithfulness is the most basic," she said, "Translation is translation. It's not a literary creation."

Li Zhaozhong, a literature researcher for the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said "poetry translation is the most difficult. Besides a good command of language, it is better for the translator to be a poet too and share a similar style with the original work."

Feng Tang said that the rules of "faithfulness," "expressiveness" and "elegance" should not be weighed equally for all translation work and each translator can have a different understanding about the original work.