Kokin Wakashū 300

Chen Li is an important translator of poetry in the Chinese-speaking world; public information about him is limited, and the available records contain no detailed biographical data. Judging from the twenty works at hand, his translation interests center on foreign poetry and classical East Asian poetics: he has translated modern Western poets such as Sylvia Plath, Nelly Sachs, César Vallejo, and Pablo Neruda, while also working deeply within the Japanese haiku and waka traditions, producing selected translations of Bashō, Buson, Issa, and Chiyo-ni, as well as of the Man'yōshū and the Kokin Wakashū. His translations balance poetic rhythm with readability, often using refined Chinese to recreate the sound and imagery of the originals, so that poems from different linguistic contexts retain their tension in Chinese. These works are mostly classified under foreign literature and classical poetry, combining literary appreciation with cultural transmission, and offer Chinese readers reliable and poetic renditions for understanding world poetry.

Chang Fen-ling (born 1954) is a Taiwanese poetry critic and translator. A graduate of the English Department of National Taiwan Normal University, she formerly taught at Hualien Girls' Senior High School. Over the years she has collaborated with her husband, Chen Li, on more than thirty translated volumes of foreign poetry, and has received the Liang Shih-chiu Literary Award for Translation several times as well as the Hu Shih Translation Award in 2017. Sixteen of her works are included in the collection, among them Sylvia Plath's Ariel, selected poems of Nelly Sachs and César Vallejo, a selection of Neruda's poetry, and translations of Japanese classics such as the Man'yōshū and Kokinshū, together with anthologies of haiku by Bashō, Buson, Issa and Chiyo-ni. Her translations span modern Western poetry and classical Japanese waka and haiku, giving her a notable presence in Chinese-language poetry translation.