Translation of a Chinese Poem by Li Qi

古從軍行 - 李頎

白日登山望烽火, 黃昏飲馬傍交河.
行人刁斗風沙暗, 公主琵琶幽怨多.
野雲萬里無城郭, 雨雪紛紛連大漠.
胡雁哀鳴夜夜飛, 胡兒眼淚雙雙落.
聞道玉門猶被遮, 應將性命逐輕車.
年年戰骨埋荒外, 空見葡萄入漢家.

An Old War Song - Li Qi; translator unknown

Through the bright day up the mountain, we scan the sky for a war-torch;
At yellow dusk we water our horses in the boundaryriver;
And when the throb of watch-drums hangs in the sandy wind,
We hear the guitar of the Chinese Princess telling her endless woe....
Three thousand miles without a town, nothing but camps,
Till the heavy sky joins the wide desert in snow.
With their plaintive calls, barbarian wildgeese fly from night to night,
And children of the Tartars have many tears to shed;
But we hear that the Jade Pass is still under siege,
And soon we stake our lives upon our light warchariots.
Each year we bury in the desert bones unnumbered,
Yet we only watch for grape-vines coming into China.

*A note on this translation found on the internet: this translation has several problems. First of all, while in general the meaning is translated, a translator should not be translating "meaning" but "text". This translator, however, translated the meaning and not the text. This leads to the second point: his or her translation does not match the word order of the orignal text. The third line of the translation said "And when the throb of watch-drums hangs in the sandy wind"; that is one possible meaning, but the actual literal translation goes something like this: "Travellers military-tool (or drums) sandy-wind (or desert) dim (or dark, blurry)". Finally, the word "we" appeared in the translation actually does not exist in the original Chinese at all. "We" is an interpretation by the translator, yet the original text only assumes the "we". In the first line, saying that "Through the bright day up the mountain, we scan the sky for a war-torch" and "The whitened sun ascends the hill and views the signal fire" are equally valid, for in the original text, there is no "subject" separating the "sun" and the act of "watching for fire signal". The literal translation of the text is actually "White-sun climbing-hill watches signal-fire." It is entirely up to interpretation to say that "we" watched the for the fire signal. And the translator gets into trouble with this interpretation, for the "we" in line one (who is out at camp) cannot be the same "we" in line twelve (who is in China watching the grapes coming in).

The Ancient Army - Li Qi; my translation

The whitened sun ascends the hill and views the signal fire,
At yellow eve, the drinking horse rests by the rivers' joint.
The travellers' come near the drums in misting desert storm,
A princess plays her Chinese harp with overflowing woe.
The wild warcamps for thousand miles escape the city wall,
And show'ring snow, chaotic flurry, fills the wasted land.
The Tartar geese's mournful echoes wing for every night,
While Tartar children's flooding tears descend from every pair.
From rumours heard that Jaded Pass seems nearly overwhelmed,
All loyal soldiers' life must trail the rushing chariots.
Though every year the bones of war are buried far from town,
Yet all would see barbarous grapes flow into Chinese home.