An empty hill, and no one in sight
But I hear the echo of voices.
The slanting sun at evening penetrates the deep woods
And shines reflected on the blue lichens.
— SOAME JENYNS, 1944
(Jenyns, Further Poems of the T’ang Dynasty)
Dull, but fairly direct, Jenyns's only additions are the inevitable I and the explanatory slanting sun at evening. He is the only translator to prefer lichen to moss, though in plural form the word is particularly ugly.
In the fourth line zhao becomes both shines reflected, rather than one or the other, but he is still in the “reflected” trap: from what is the sun reflected?
Chinese poetry was based on the precise observation of the physical world. Jenyns and other translators come from a tradition where the notion of verifying a poetic image would be silly, where the word “poetic” itself is synonymous with “dreamy.”
He might have squeaked by had he written And shines reflected by the blue lichens — accurate to nature, if not to Wang. But Jenyns — at the time Assistant Keeper of the Department of Oriental Antiquities at the British Museum, translating through the Blitz — was so far removed from the poem’s experience that he found it necessary to add the following footnote to line 2: “The woods are so thick that woodcutters and herdsmen are hidden.”