On Transliterating the Book of Odes

The Chinese Book of Odes (詩經), a poetry anthology that is possibly the earliest literary monument in any still-living language, used phonetic effects such as rhyme, metre, and alliteration to achieve its poetic artistry. However, these effects have been largely obliterated by changes in the sounds of Chinese over almost three millennia, and the non-alphabetic nature of Chinese script has concealed the fact that the effects once existed. The author discusses some of the issues that arise in compiling an edition of the Odes that uses transliteration of the original pronunciation, as reconstructed by recent historical linguistics, to restore their “speech music”, as well as issues in producing new English versions of the poetry which come as close as possible to show present-day readers what the poems were for their first readers.