Preserving poetry's charm

Stellar reviews

For his professionalism and passion, Zhao received praise from local linguistics experts for his work. Zhao currently leads a team of 12 teachers and postgraduates to do research on Chinese literature at the university.

In the foreword for Zhao's translation of Du Fu's poems published in November, Jiang Xiaohua, a professor in translation at the Macao Polytechnic Institute, commends Zhao for his skillful handling of the poems' essence.

Wang Ying, a researcher from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of Literature, also compliments Zhao for his work on Wang Wei's poems, saying that he translated the original text in such a way that "a Western reader without background knowledge can comprehend the beauty and most idyllic pictures showcased in poems".

"Being able to depict an image through a poem is really a characteristic style of his. The poem demonstrates the poet's experience in an ideal spiritual realm. Zhao also explicitly reveals the logic of the sentences and supplements the poetic conception and milieu with the right words," Wang Ying says.

"Rhyme and meter are what Zhao stresses most in his translations, and this perfectly retains the poem's original meaning, form, rhyme and artistic conception."