 Neither Pound nor Fenollosa spoke or read Chinese proficiently, and Pound was working from the posthumous notes of an American who had studied Chinese under a Japanese teacher.Nevertheless, according to Michael Alexander, there are competent judges of Chinese and English poetry who see Pound's work as the best translations of Chinese to English poetry ever made, though scholars have complained that it contains many mistakes.Pound has been criticized for omitting or adding sections to his poems which have no basis in the original texts, though critics argue that the fidelity of "Cathay" to the original Chinese is beside the point.