A Comparative Study Of San Guo Yan Yi’s Poetry From Empathetic Perspective

San Guo Yan Yi, one of the most outstanding works in classic Chinese literature, has profound themes. Moreover, it represents the highest artistic achievements. Up to now, this novel has been translated into Latin, English, French, German, Dutch, Russian, Estonian, Polish, etc. Because of its great influence, it is even called "the Chinese epic". What’s more, the poetry of San Guo Yan Yi have a unique place in the Chinese literature, not only because the poetry come from San Guo Yan Yi, but also the content and form of the poems cover their own color in Chinese literature history. As one of the four masterpieces in classic Chinese literature, San Guo Yan Yi is so attractive that translators, generation after generation, have been trying to translate it into English. However, among the numerous English versions, many are excerpts, and only two are complete English versions:one is translated by C.H. Brewitt-Taylor at the beginning of20th century, published in1925, while the other is translated by Moss Roberts in1980s, published in1992firstly. After the two versions of San Guo Yan Yi were published, the study on translation of San Guo Yan Yi is becoming more and more popular, whereas the individual study on poetry translation in San Guo Yan Yi is rarely found. The artistic value of San Guo Yan Yi is multiple:it lies not only in the richness of contents, but also in its successful integration with almost all the techniques of literary merits. Among them the poetic style is soul and the splendid flower of the novel, for four genres (shi, ci, qu, fu) of Chinese poetic style, closely related with the plot development and the characterization of novel, are delicately scattered in the novel as an indispensable organic component of it. The poems in the novel are superexcellent expressions of the writer’s feelings as well and absolutely are aesthetic entities embodying aesthetic elements. This approach both strengthens the effectiveness of plot development and brings out the writer’s language art. However, it renders the translation of the poems difficult as well. Classical Chinese poetry are characterized by its terseness in language, abstruseness in meaning, richness in imagery, sharpness in emotion, and distinctiveness in rhyme and rhythm. The poems of San Guo Yan Yi have these features and moreover, they are based on the Chinese classical novels with the background of Chinese history. So the translation of poetry in San Guo Yan Yi is really challenging. A poem is usually set within a socio-cultural environment, which is the source of artistic creation; therefore, poem is often a mirror reflecting the conditions of a nation’s culture. And the translation of poetry in San Guo Yan Yi is a bridge to introduce the Chinese classical literature as well as Chinese classical culture. Some people even think how the poems of the novel are translated is a key factor in judging the success of the translation. However, as far as I know, the comparative studies of San Guo Yan Yi’s poetry translation are not comprehensive; most scholars focus their concern on the translatability. Research on how different translators release their own feelings on their translation of poems has been inadequate; in other words, the issue whether the differences in different versions rendered by different translators are caused by their different empathy still awaits exploration. So, this thesis will choose some poems from San Guo Yan Yi, doing a comparative study between C.H. Brewitt-Taylor’s and Moss Roberts’poetry translations from the perspective of empathy. It will be the main goal to exemplify how the translators of these two versions empathize with the poets of the original in poetry translation under the guidance of empathy theory.The issue of empathy in translation will be approached from three perspectives:aesthetic empathy, cultural empathy and empathetic obstacle. After the comparative studies and analysis of the poems in San Guo Yan Yi, we find that C.H. Brewitt-Taylor’s and Moss Roberts both employ the approach of empathy in their translation of poetry. C.H. Brewitt-Taylor mainly empathizes towards the readers and the target text (TT for short); while Moss Roberts towards the author and the source text (ST for short). From these two translators’versions, we can see that translation is not "faithful" or "objective" as the translation theories advocate, translator can’t stay "neutral","practical or realistic" in the process of translation, subjectivity is not only inevitable but even indispensable, because the language (the foundation of translation) and the translator (the subject of translation) both bear subjectivity. Such subjectivity is not always a subjective conjecture but a thinking mode of translation; it is a manifestation of the subjective initiative of the translation subject. Admitting this subjectivity doesn’t mean the denial of objectivity of translation but a dialectic attitude towards translation.