Poetry Interpretation in Lin Yutang’s Practice of “Translating China”—A Case Study of <i>My Country and My People</i>

Lin Yutang, with his considerable insight into bi-culture and translation expertise, was generally considered the greatest writer and translator in promoting Chinese culture internationally. In his practice of “translating China”, he respected two cultures and took the original and target readers into consideration, adopting various approaches consistent with his translation criteria of “faithfulness”, “fluency” and “beauty”. In My Country and My People, there is a great deal of poetry interpretation to illustrate many facets of Chinese life. Poetry, as an enchanting realm of artistic expression and the essence of culture, penetrates the depths of human emotions and reveals profound thoughts. This paper, taking poetry in My Country and My People as case studies, explores the approaches Lin adopted in poetry interpretation, including transliteration, literal translation, amplification, negation, free translation, and literal translation plus free translation, hoping it could be of certain help in promoting Chinese poetry culture to the world and telling China’s poetry story in a better way.