Much to the shock of the fans of Indian Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, a Chinese poet has translated lines from his lyrical poems and infused them with vulgar and sexual words.
Chinese writer Feng Tang translated the original Tagore’s version published in the 1920s, Stray Birds, a collection of lyrical poems, and made them look like a ridiculous translation. The lyrics known for simplicity and sublime beauty, have turned into horny and vulgar.
Here are few verses from Tagore’s original poems and Feng’s translated ones.
Original: ‘The great Earth makes herself hospitable with the help of the grass'”. Feng’s version is: ‘Because of green grass, the great Earth becomes quite horny.'”
Another example: Tagore’s original: ‘The world puts off its mask of vastness to its lover. It becomes small as one Song, as one kiss of the eternal’.
Feng’s version is: ‘The wide world unzipped its crotch to its lover. Long as a tongue kiss, small as a line of a poem.'”
Being the first non-European to win Nobel Prize (1913), Tagore has many fans in China and there are many Chinese versions of his poems but Feng’s version is atrocious.