During the Confucian Chosŏn dynasty, the poetry of Confucian Tu Fu was held in a higher regard and received more scholarly attention than the Taoist poetry of Li Po. Although this was due in part to governmental policy of promoting Tu Fu's poetry, his poetry was also used to study formal poetics. When the Hunmin chŏngŭm [“Correct sounds for instructing the people"] was published, and hangŭl (the Korean vernacular writing system) invented, the court commissioned a translation of Tu Fu's poems into Korean. Li Po's poems, on the other hand, received no such interest from court officials and after remaining untranslated for an extensive period was finally translated by the literary public that enjoyed his poetry. Instead of turning to Chinese anthologies when translating Li Po's poems, these new translations were independently referenced and annotated by the translators themselves. While the quality of annotation was not very sophisticated, they added to the appreciation of Li Po's poems and were of much help to the other local literati as well as future generations. The annotations of the four existant translations do not overlap with each other, demonstrating that each translation was interpreted and translated independently by their respective translators, and do not appear to have influenced each other. This paper shall analyze in detail the characteristics of these four translations of Li Po's poetry.

During the Confucian Chosŏn dynasty, the poetry of Confucian Tu Fu was held in a higher regard and received more scholarly attention than the Taoist poetry of Li Po. Although this was due in part to governmental policy of promoting Tu Fu's poetry, his poetry was also used to study formal poetics. When the Hunmin chŏngŭm [“Correct sounds for instructing the people"] was published, and hangŭl (the Korean vernacular writing system) invented, the court commissioned a translation of Tu Fu's poems into Korean. Li Po's poems, on the other hand, received no such interest from court officials and after remaining untranslated for an extensive period was finally translated by the literary public that enjoyed his poetry. Instead of turning to Chinese anthologies when translating Li Po's poems, these new translations were independently referenced and annotated by the translators themselves. While the quality of annotation was not very sophisticated, they added to the appreciation of Li Po's poems and were of much help to the other local literati as well as future generations. The annotations of the four existant translations do not overlap with each other, demonstrating that each translation was interpreted and translated independently by their respective translators, and do not appear to have influenced each other. This paper shall analyze in detail the characteristics of these four translations of Li Po's poetry.

Poetry of Li Po, Chinese anthologies, Four annotated translations, Literati translations