ABSTRACT
Having undertaken an overview of the West’s encounter with the Naxi texts over a period of 100 years, where does that leave the practice of translating these unique ritual books? Ezra Pound’s ethnopoetics may be one way forward, fusing the visual images of the graphs themselves with modernist poetic metre. Pound was not alone in such an endeavour: Jerome Rothenberg also attempted to update Rock’s thick translations by paring them down to the most basic elements: the graphs and a simple English language crib. These are, in a way, “minimal” translations, telling the stories contained within the enigmatic books without attempting to translate all of their cultural context, all the while leaving the way open for these paths to be explored. Rock may have “saved” the world of the Naxi by devoting himself to the translation of their literature, but their continued survival depends on continued translation.
