Translating poetry is difficult; translating Chinese poetry into any other languages is particularly difficult, because the root of Chinese language is the characters that are symbolic images (not real pictures, but meaningful pictures), whereas all western languages are phonetic notes. The meaning of all western languages is transmitted by sounds only, but that of Chinese is by both images and sounds. Even the sounds have various tonalities, when weaved in the verse, creating a musical and rhythmic feeling that is totally lost in any translation, not to speak of the images that come with the characters. The original verses of Pipa Xing are very beautiful in all aspects. In this translation, only the story is kept, thus it can hardly be regarded as poem in terms of rhythm and meaning. SOURCE