Selfward State And Selfless State:a Comparative Study On J.P. Seaton’s And Xu Yuanchong’s Translations Of Chinese Classical Poetry

Translation is a great human activity. It can enable people in different societies communicate in politics, economy and culture. Translation has a long history and involves many aspects. As an important part of translation, literary translation contributes a great deal to the development of translation and the enrichment of translation theories. Poetry, as a literary form, is the essence of language. Since poetry is short in form while rich in connotation, it is a challenge to translate it into English. Nevertheless, with the development of translation activity and the enrichment of translation theories, more and more translators get a foot into Chinese classical poetry translation.The famous American translator J.P. Seaton and the Chinese translator Xu Yuan Chong are outstanding representatives in Chinese classical poetry translation. The methods they applied are different. J.P. Seaton prefers free style, and he doesn’t emphasize on the rhyme and rhythm, but focused on the intuitive impression and effect, the concantenation of image, and the distinct details. Xu Yuanchong translates poetry into poetry. His translation is based on his theory of "three beauties".Wang Guowei put forward the concept of "selfward state" and "selfless state" in his work Commentaries on Lyrical Work."Selfward state" means to view objects from "my" standpoint, while "selfless state" means to view objects from the angles of objects. Later this concept has been interpreted that the author putting his own feeling into the object that he is describing is in "selfward state", and describing the object objectively is in "selfless state". As the subject of translation, though translator is not describing things directly, he more or less puts his own feeling into the work he translates, and this is an important factor that affects the style of the translation.Based on a detailed study on Xu Yuanchong and J.P. Seaton’s translation strategies of Chinese classical poems, the author makes a comparison between their translations from a new perspective—"selfward state" and "selfless state", and intends to discuss the effects of translator’s subjectivity to the different translation versions of the same work. The main methodologies adopted in this thesis are contrastive analysis and case study. From the research, we find that the two translators carry with forceful purpose in the choice of translation strategies of Chinese classical poetry. It is with these different translation purposes that Xu Yuanchong and J.P. Seaton utilize different translation strategies. For Xu Yuanchong, because he regards flourishing the world culture as the primary purpose, he devotes himself to achieving "three likes" and "three beauties" of Chinese classical poetry so as to make a contribution to the world culture. In practical terms, he tries his best to make his translation keep the original images, antithesis, contrast, sentence length, repetition, rhyme and rich connotation, so his translation is more inclined to "selfless state". By contrast, J.P. Seaton applies imagism principles like juxtaposition of imagery and free style to translate ancient poetry. Accordingly, he ignores many features that compose "three beauties" of Chinese classical poetry and his translation is more inclined to "selfless state". However, no matter which state the translator is in, translation is the product of two states.Thus it can be seen that the process of the translation of Chinese classical poetry is one in which "selfless state" and "selfward state" blend with each other. The result of the translation of Chinese classical poetry is the end product of "selfless state" and "selfward state", only by grasping an appropriate scale can the translation be authentic to the original ones as well as acceptable to the readers.