Feeback on loose 文言 translation of a Shakespeare passage

[Tomsima]

This is sort of for fun, so nothing too serious. Wanted to do a generic loose 文言 translation based on the passage below for a small piece of calligraphy:

 

The passage is from Richard II;

 

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle, 
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, 
This other Eden, demi-paradise, 
This fortress built by Nature for herself 
Against infection and the hand of war, 
This happy breed of men, this little world, 
This precious stone set in the silver sea, 
Which serves it in the office of a wall 
Or as a moat defensive to a house, 
Against the envy of less happier lands,-- 
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.
 

My attempt:

 

夫君之御

統於尊之島也

嚴之所在

戰神之宮

謂下土之九天

皇天為防禍而在此造塞

此地乃盈傑

斯微小之界

猶海裏之潛壁

水如圍牆

或屋之壕溝

其杜賊之嫉

其樂眾之心

此地即英國也

 

Just wanted some feedback from some of the very knowledgeable 文言 experts here as my chinese friends seem to think anything with a 也 at the end of the sentence is great. 

[Michaelyus]

Not a 文言 expert at all,  but perhaps a greater range of expressive particles (哉/兮/乎) and fewer 也 would sound better to me - it's a little bit too declarative.

Nice use of 九天.

 

I think you definitely need some kind of parallelism for line 4/5.

 

I spot a 裏, which strikes me as distinctly non-文言

濠 is better than 壕 for "moat".

 

其杜賊之嫉 not sure about this line; I actually wasn't aware of 杜絕 as a modern Mandarin verb. But my main issue is that I actually don't think this is the sentiment that Shakespeare is expressing. 賊 I've always thought of as thief, but not "lesser countries"; do you have a source for that? I'm wracking my brain for what the 五書 calls them.

 

In any case, I appreciate you're going for a prose translation, and maybe my appreciation of drama in Classical Chinese is extremely poor (the traditions of East Asia and Greco-Romano-Europe are very distinct in their evolution of the music/verse/drama relationship), but I feel like this is begging for some kind of constrained writing that can respect the very strong rhythm of the original English. 
 

[mouse]

I thought I'd go for a different feel:

 

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle, 
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, 
This other Eden, demi-paradise, 
This fortress built by Nature for herself 
Against infection and the hand of war, 
This happy breed of men, this little world, 
This precious stone set in the silver sea, 
Which serves it in the office of a wall 
Or as a moat defensive to a house, 
Against the envy of less happier lands,-- 
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.

 

王位瑞島

大地熒座

異園半神

社自造堡

避疫亂而作

小域有樂人

寶鑲於銀海

海事域為壁

或像宅之洫

貪國征所衛

福土哉地域哉

英國之所在

 

I'm aware that this is complete doggerel.

 

 

[Tomsima]

@Michaelyus Great feedback, thanks for the ideas. Rereading my attempt I can see its pretty obvious I worked into the 文言 from modern Mandarin; I looked at a few modern translations first, rather than just go straight from the English. 裏 definitely a big oversight, I'm feeling like 中 would be more appropriate. Definitely agree this needs more expressive particles.

 

I struggled with how to deal with 'seat of Mars', I really wanted a good literary Chinese figure to substitute this, but couldn't think of anything that worked well as a parallel. Any ideas?

 

I'm gonna stick to prose translation; totally aware as soon as I try to attempt something of a poetic translation, I'll be counting rhythms, stresses, tones (undoubtedly ending up in researching older phonological differences). Just a quick and fun idea for now, maybe something for the future....