Different Strategies In Translating Ancient Chinese Poems By Translators Of Different Cultural Backgrounds: A Comparative Study Of Witter Bynner's And Xu Yuanzhong's Versions Of 300 Tang Poems

Ancient Chinese poetry, with a long history and delicate images and unique forms, is a great treasure which the Chinese people cherish dearly and offer the world. With the cross-cultural communications between the east and west steadily increasing, the 300 Tang Poems, as the quintessence of classic Chinese poetry, is highly valued by different nations and peoples all over the world. As early as in 1929, The Jade Mountain translated by W. Bynner, was published firstly in the United States. Since then, especially after China's reform and opening to the outside world in the 80's of the last century, many new versions of selections of Tang Poems by Chinese translators have emerged one after another, among them Prof. Xu Yuanzhong is a good example. He has done a lot in translating classic Chinese poems into both English and French and meanwhile formed his unique theory on poetry translation.Nowadays in translation field, more and more scholars have done studies of cultural elements in inter-lingual translation and they pay more attention to the functions and influence of cultural elements in translation study, especially from viewpoints of cross-cultural aspects. In Translation History and culture the co-editors Susan Bassnett and Andre Lefevere, in 1990, suggested that translation studies take the'cultural turn'and look toward work of cultural studies scholars; in their Constructive Cultures the essays address the most recent developments in theory, in cultural studies, in translation research, and in teaching translation; and in Andre Lefevere's translation, rewriting and the Manipulation of Literary fame, the author puts translation studies in a wide variety of fields, including linguistics, literary study, history, anthropology, psychology and economics. We, from their discussion in their works, may benefit a lot in studying different versions by translators with different cultural backgrounds and in studying different translation strategies.Through comparison and discussion of W. Bynner's and Xu Yuanchong's versions, we may know the difference of them and the influence from different times and cultural backgrounds, thus coming into clear view of their different translation strategies.