On “the car is backing up, please pay attention”

“the car is backing up, please pay attention” is the first poem by Chinese avant-garde poet Xiao Xi to be translated into English. The phrase “注意,” which roughly means “pay attention,” “be careful about,” or “watch out for,” is crucial to the poem’s central themes of paying careful attention to the world around us. In the original text, the phrase “注意” is repeated throughout the poem, appearing at the start of each and every line. The use of repetition, a common technique in Chinese poetry, works very well in the source text and contributes to the poem’s dramatic emotional build-up. 

However, when I began translating this poem, I made the bold and important decision to deviate from directly translating the repetition of the phrase “注意” into English. This is partially due to the fact that if I were to repeat a phrase like “pay attention” ten times in my English translation, this repetition could drastically slow down the poem’s pace and cause it to feel monotonous, which would ironically result in a reading experience antithetical to the effect of the original. Even more importantly, while the Chinese phrase “注意” is very fluid and can be applied to watching out for or observing any situation, the English phrase “pay attention” is not so universally appropriate; in English, it’s often preferable to choose action phrases specific to each situation, as shown by the examples “watch out for the sprinting kids and cats,” “be vigilant about rolling leather balls,” and “observe the sorrowful face in the mist.”

My decision to take a more creative approach to translating the phrase “注意” means that instead of having one consistent translation such as “pay attention” to fall back on throughout the poem, I have to put extra effort into identifying the most tonally appropriate phrase for each sentence based on the imagery it contains. This translation method allows me to preserve the rapid flow, rhythm, and energy of the original work, while also giving me the liberty to highlight the line-by-line emotional subtleties of the original work.