The French Version Of Wen Xin Diao Long And The Research

The very person who first put forward the idea of the World Literature is the great German poet Goethe. Since then, in different countries and in different cultural areas, national literature, comparative literature and general literature etc, which can be considered as cultural and cross-cultural study came gradually into being. Although the comparatists might belong to different research groups, they might hold different personal opinions and they might employ different research methods, they have been in a large sense making efforts to build up the World Literature. As approaches the globalization of the world economy, the world literature and even the world literary criticism are coming nearer.Nowadays the cultural compact between the east and the west brings us the fact that the western culture gets to be influenced by the native culture and the native one begins to be westernized. In this new formation, how can the classic Chinese literary criticism evaluate itself? How to understand the importance of the classic Chinese literary criticism? And how to make known the sense of the beautiful language expressions in the ancient Chinese literary criticism? These questions get to focus the attention of the literature field in China and many contemporary comparatists return once more to the research on Wen Xin Diao Long (The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons)Since the appearance of Wen Xin Diao Long by the end of qi dynasty, the great works was greatly valued by many important figures in the course of Chinese history: the writer Shen Yue, the contemporary of the author Liu Xie said: " it treats thoroughly the theory of literary writing and it deals with a lot of examples." (the Biography of Liu Xie in the History of Lian Dynasty) Liu Zhiji, the great man of letters in Tang Dynasty set the book as an example to follow for his own book History. Zhang Xuecheng in Qing dynasty said: "it is not only great in size but also perfect in thinking." Since Ming and Qing dynasties, there came a lot of researches on Wen Xin Diao Long. From 1949, the book has been largely studied. Recently it draws so much attention both in and outside China that the result is surprising. Just as Yu Wen Suo An, a sinologist in the US, said that the importance of the book "can never be exaggerated." (Yu Wen Suo An, 2003:313)According to Professor Cao Shunqing, the theory in Wen Xin Diao Long can be compared to any greatest works in the west both in aesthetics and in literary criticism. But unfortunately, he thought, the west did not realize the value of the book. This is not the prejudice of the west, according to him, for we are in bad need to make known the book and to have the study on it. In fact, a lot of others experts and researchers have long ago realized the importance to translate the classic literary works into foreign languages. They thought that the Chinese ought to start the translations on our own initiative in order to export our classic literary works. What's more, some competent translation institutes began to organize the work of translation of Chinese classic literary works. But the reality we are facing to is that, as far as Wen Xin Diao Long is concerned, the whole book is translated in English, Italian and Spanish, twenty-five chapters in Germany and no more than twenty in French.Under the encouragement and the guidance of my tutor Cao Shunqing, I have been working hard for five years before I finally finished translating the whole book in French. This is the first version in French both in and outside China. This version fills in the gaps in the field of dragonology. In my thesis I also deal with the research on all the translation versions in different languages in Europe especially in French and I try to sum up the problems appeared in my translation in French and try to find the way out. Five aspects have been analyzed: illogical contents in parallelism and their solution, translation of numbers and of the numeral-classifier compounds, the metaphors, the punctuations, and the translation skills. In this way, we deal with the translation methods from Chinese classic language expressions in Wen Xin Diao Long into French originated from Latin, and the maximum consistent possibility of translation between the two languages. Apart from this, I also discuss the evaluation of Chinese classic language expressions appeared in Wen Xin Diao Long in three perspectives from point of view of comparative literature: the different way of thinking——in literary criticism; different connotation and denotation in Chinese classic language expressions——wen in Chinese is not the equivalent of literature, different syntax——pian wen can hardly find its equivalent in French. Therefore wecan improve our understanding of Chinese classic language expressions by means of the above comparative discussions, which can encourage the reading and study of Chinese classic works. What I have done may also be served as a foundation to further translation of other Chinese classic literary works which will help the construction of Chinese classic language expressions. What is more, we did case analysis to the last twenty-five chapters of wen xin diao long. We also did explanative and comparative study of Chinese poetics terms from the perspectives of society, history, culture and translation. Our focus is also on the theoretic study among the comparative study, poetics and translation in order to emphasis the importance of the translation. In a large sense this works fill in the gap in the field of translation that there has been no French version of wen xin diao lon.As I am limited in education, in experience, in capability and in competence in doing research work, my research work might not be the good and my translation might not be the appropriate. What's more I might create some mistakes in my study and in my translation. But what I put forward in my thesis might be regarded as one of the method to supplement the others', for every method helps enlarge our horizon and widen our way of translation. What is more important is that only when we get to introduce our Chinese classic literary works to the world, can they really have the possibility to go into the world literature.When I finally finished my thesis, I recalled back what I have dong in the past five years. I realize gratefully that it is my tutor whose words have encouraged me to go through all the difficulties in the course of my research "study honest and aim high". Just because of his strict encourage that my thesis comes into being. I would like to thank the Literature and Mass Media Faculty to provide me with the opportunity to know Liu Xie and his book Wen Sin Diao Long. And my thanks finally go to the Foreign Languages Faculty of the Southwest Jiao-tong University, without their approval I could not continue my superior study after I was forty years old. In this sense, my thesis is the result of the efforts of the all above.