"...fancy collection of glosses from Japanese
literature professors to assist them..."

"In neither case does the Chinese
poem escape being domesticated into English"

What is "fancy" about a collection of glosses? One might infer from the
tone that a translator who made use of glosses compiled by scholars somehow
had an 'unfair' advantage over translators who had to rely only upon their
wits and ignorance.

Don't you think Pound was making a good faith attempt to convey something
of the "otherness" or "foreignness" of the originals by employing a terse,
paratactic style over against the verbosity of the 14-line verse paragraphs?

Tim Romano