help needed with Chinese email

[Lu]

My written Chinese is not too good, can someone please look at this email for me?

This is what I want to write:

Dear [name],

I write to you on behalf of "[name periodical]", a periodical for Chinese literature in Dutch translation. Apart from translated Chinese literature, we also publish poems by Dutch-language writers in reaction to Chinese poems. For our last issue, we asked Dutch and Belgian poets to reply to a poem by Yao He 姚合. In our upcoming issue we would like to place replies of Chinese poets to this poem. We hope you can contribute!

I'll include the poem below.

Kind regards,

[my name]

And this is what I made of it:

[name]先生/小姐您好，

我是"[name of periodical]"季刊的编辑之一。[name of periodical]专门发表翻成荷兰文的中国文学。除此之外，[name of periodical]也请荷兰/比利时的作家看一首中文诗，编写反应。在我们上一个号(I know this is wrong, what's 'our last issue'?),我们请了机位荷兰与比利时的诗人对一首姚合的诗写反应，下次我们想请几位中国诗人写反应。希望您也愿意贡献一首诗。

之下是姚合的诗。

多谢您的帮忙！

祝

新年快乐

[my name] 敬上

(I can't find the Yao He poem now, will post it later.)

Any corrections are much appreciated!

[skylee]

Consider -

last issue - 上一期

to write own poem in response to a Chinese poem - 以自己的詩回應一首中文詩

机位 (X) 幾位(O)

[yersi]

skylee covered most of the essential stuff, if you are still looking for feedback I just rewrote the email a bit. Most of the changes I made weren't really corrections, more style problems or wordings I thought sounded better. I'm not a native speaker so you should of course take anything I write with a grain of salt.

One thing: usually in the emails I receive people say 以下為 or 附件為 when referring to attachments or something below the main body of the email.

[name]先生/小姐您好，

我是"[name of periodical]"季刊的編輯。除了发表翻成荷蘭文的中國文學以外，本刊也邀請荷兰和比利时詩人看一首中文詩，而且以自己的詩回應。上一期我們邀請了幾位荷蘭和比利時的詩人回應姚合的一首詩， 下一期我們則想邀請幾位中國詩人寫他們的回應。我們想邀請您參與，希望您有機會為我們提供一首詩。

以下為姚合的詩。

敬祝 2009 事事順心 萬事如意

[name] 敬上

Edited December 29, 2008 at 01:36 AM by yersi

[gato]

In our upcoming issue we would like to place replies of Chinese poets to this poem. We hope you can contribute!

下次我们想请几位中国诗人写反应。希望您也愿意贡献一首诗。

Is the reaction supposedly to be in the form of a poem? The English version doesn't suggest that, but the Chinese version does.

[Lu]

It is. Well, they can write anything they like really, but since this is going to be sent to poets, we're expecting that if they contribute it will be with a poem.

Thanks for the corrections, skylee and yersi!

[chenpv]

Probably it's simpler to use '作诗', '和诗'，‘回和’。

[Lu]

That does look simpler, but where would you use those?

[Lu]

And here's the Yao He poem, for who wants to read it. I like it.

寄李干　　　　姚合

寻常自怪诗无味，

虽被人吟不喜闻。

见说与君同一格，

数篇到火却休焚。