On The Meaning Loss And Translation Strategies Of Li Bai’s Poetry

Being regarded as a treasure of Chinese traditional culture, Li Bai?s poetry embodies strong and splendid romanticism, fluent and natural language, abundant and magnificent artistic imagination. Many experts and scholars both at home and abroad strive to translate them into foreign languages, among which English translation makes significant achievements. Since Li Bai?s poetry carries rich culture connotations, applies diverse words and expressions and boasts fascinating charm, it is inevitable that meaning loss comes into being in the process of English translation, demonstrating in the aspects of semantic loss, cultural default and deficiency of rhetorical devices.Based on the previous domestic and overseas research and enlightened by the functional equivalence theory of Eugene Nida, the thesis firstly expounds the phenomenon of semantic loss from the aspects of conceptual meaning and connotative meaning, and suggests applying domestication and foreignization translation strategies. It then explains the concept of culture and the huge cultural difference among different nationalities, makes specific analysis of the absence of allusions and history in Li Bai?s poetry translation and recommends utilizing footnote and free translation methods. Lastly, it explores the deficiency of pun and metaphor in Li Bai?s poetry translation and brings forward that amplification and omission can be employed to deal with the deficiency of rhetorical devices.In the end, the thesis draws the conclusion that abiding by functional equivalence theory and emphasizing on conveying the content of original text, the translator should exert himself/herself to make the readers of the target language feel almost the same as those of the source language, combine the translation strategies of domestication, foreignization, footnote, free translation, amplification and omission, and facilitate the exchange between Chinese and English culture.