Comparison Of Allusion Translation In The English Versions Of Mao Zedong's Poems-from The Perspective Of Cultural Schema

Allusion is quintessence of Chinese language and crystallization of human wisdom. Poetic language stresses conciseness,subtlety,euphemism,and association,while as a gem in language,allusion is succinct in form but profound in meaning,which makes it the first choice of literati of all ages.Whether allusion is properly used has become an important yardstick in judging a poet's literary achievement.Mao Zedong is not only a great political leader,but an accomplished poet as well.In his poems,he inherits merits of classical Chinese poetry and develops it in his own way. Each piece of Mao's poetry is a demonstration of his solid literary foundation and his striking acquaintance with ancient Chinese classics.Creative use of allusion is one of the most prominent language features of Mao Zedong's works and poems.He prefers to use allusion but not restricted by it;he learns from the ancients but do not copy them.His "creation" lies in the combination of allusion and contemporary life experience.By borrowing allusions from other literary works,he has expressed something new,more forceful than ordinary comments.Just as Zhao Puchu said,Mao is good at using allusions in a flexible way to make use of their connotations to serve the subject of the poem. (quoted in Li Zijian,1991:72)As an organic whole of Mao Zedong Thought,Mao Zedong's poetry has attracted great concern since its publication.How to appropriately render them into English comprises a difficult task for translators in which allusion translation is a thorn problem. Up to now,there have been dozens of versions.I took two of them to compare,which are "the official version" published by the Commercial Press in 1976 and Zhao Zhentao's version in 1992 respectively.As far as allusion translation is concerned,there are big differences between the two.I have made a comparison of the translation orientations, principles and translation methods by different translators to see their considerations for the target readers' ability from the perspective of cultural schema.Specifically speaking, the commercial press version adopted source-text orientation,"faithfulness" as its translation principle and employs literal translation.While the metrical form of the original is changed into free verse,those associative tune names are all transliterated,and there is not any annotation attached except for the author's notes.More importantly,the literal translation of allusions makes them unnatural or even incomprehensible to target readers;On the contrary,Zhao Zhentao shows more consideration for target readers' cultural schema.His version is target-reader oriented,preserves the metrical style of the original,supplements lots of cultural background information,and adopts liberal translation plus annotation method to facilitate target readers' understanding of the poems and the Chinese culture as well.Therefore,as for allusion translation,the author believes target-reader orientation is more appropriate in transferring the essence of Mao Zedong's poems and it is beneficial for the exchange and development of different cultures.