The Great Translator Guo Moruo: Creation.Ideology & Translation

Abstract Title: The Great Translator Guo Moruo: CreationIdeology & Translation Supervisor: Professor Sun Kaixiang Writer: Liu Lin Guo Moruo (1892"987) was born in Leshan City of Sichuan Province, who has distinguished himself as a great writer, poet and translator in China's modern and contemporary history of literature. Guo Moruo has contributed much to the cause of Chinese translation, both in theory and practice. His translation practice is almost carried out simultaneously with his creation practice, which was started with rendering Goethe's Faust in 1919 and ended in 1947, lasting nearly thirty years. Besides, Guo Moruo translated, in March and May of 1969, filly English poems which were sorted out for publication by his two daughters(i.e., Guo Pingying and Guo Shuying), and entitled Translation Manuscripts of English Poems. It is roughly estimated that Guo Moruo has translated more than a hundred works of over sixty writers or poets in ten countries. His published translations are divided into thirty offprints for publication, with the total words of over three million. He also translated some scientific works, historical works of archaeological discoveries and Marxist classical works. Concerning translation theory, Guo Moruo stands for Yan Fu's criteria of translation(i.e., faithfttlness, expressiveness & elegance). However, he lays more emphasis upon "elegance"and is inclined to "free translation" which are mainly implied in his poetry translation. Besides, with respect to the theory of poetry translation, he upholds that poems must be translated by poets and the translation must be like poems, too; he offers a method of poetry translation called "flavor translation" Moreover, he suggests those non-poet translators adopt the method of "two-step" translation, i.e., those who are versed in the source language may render the original poems first, and then a native poet will do the polishing work. Guo Moruo's contributions to the Chinese literature are tremendous. Meanwhile, his creations bear the traces of the influence from his translation practice which can be found in his Romantic creation, and in his later realistic creation as well. Moreover, his translation practice has also influenced his creation in the ways of source materials and writing techniques(e.g., reflecting the present society with the past events, tragic but heroic plots and the analogy between the protagonist and author). Guo Moruo's translation practice has influenced his ideology, too. Guo Moruo believed in pantheism in his early age as a result of his fondness of reading Zhuangzi at his childhood and Tagore and Spinoza's works in his youth. In addition, translating The Sorrows of Young Werther written by Goethe(who is a pantheist) also conduces to the formation of his pantheism. Later, Guo Moruo translated, during his stay in Japan, Turgenev's Virgin Soil and Kashojo's Social Organization and Social Revolution, which help to make him a steadfast Marxist. Guo Moruo's translation practice has such a great influence on his creation that it proves that translation is not only a process of reproduction, but also a process of acquiring writing techniques and source materials for a writer and a way of absorbing new spiritual nourishment. Thus translation serves as a compass to a certain degree for the translator.