Study On Ezra Pound’s Cathay From The Perspective Of Eco-translatology

At the beginning of the 21st century, Professor Hu Gengshen put forward the theory of Translation as Adaptation and Selection, introducing the theory of Natural Selection and Evolution into translation studies. According to Professor Hu, translation is described as a translator’s Adaptation and Selection activities in a translational Eco-environment. On this basis, Professor Hu has constructed and developed the theory of Eco-translatology, which attempts to describe and interpret translation from an ecological perspective. As a newly multidisciplinary research, Eco-translatology makes a new analysis about the translation activities in the translational Eco-environment, which broadens translational researchers’views and expands the scope of translation studies.Ezra Pound (1885-1972), one of the most outstanding poets in modern American literary history, is also an excellent translator. The year 1915 saw the appearance of Pound’s Cathay, a collection of English translations of 19 Chinese classical poems from Earnest Fenollosa’s manuscripts. Ever since its publication, Cathay has been controversial, both arousing admiration and provoking condemnation for various reasons. Some commenters criticized Pound’s misunderstanding and mistranslating of Chinese culture and language and his "creative writing", which was considered as "disloyalty" to the source texts. On the contrary, others praised the significance of cross-cultural communication through Cathay, and they thought by considering the psychology and custom of the target readers, Pound has transferred the core value of Chinese classical poetry successfully. This thesis, which is essentially descriptive rather than prescriptive, is an attempt to reexamine and reevaluate Cathay from the perspective of Eco-translatology.In this thesis, the author tries to study the following two aspects:first, the reasons why Pound chose the 19 poems as the material for his translation, or Pound’s selective adaptation in the pre-translating process; second, the three-dimensional transformation during Pound’s translating process, or Pound’s adaptive selection in the process of translating. After the study, the author finds out that firstly, Pound’s decision-making of translating was out of his adaptation and selection to the external and internal needs. Among them, the external needs include three parts:the social eco-environment that the society was full of wars and the people led a rather miserable life; the cultural eco-environment that with the rise of capitalist industrialization, the people were in spiritual deficiency. Meanwhile, during the Victorian period, the literature was vacuous and abundant of emotions, which was badly in need of reform; the translational eco-environment at that time was that the poems were all translated in the form of strict metrical verses, and the translators piled a lot of useless words to get the rhyme at the cost of meaning. Thus, there was an urgent need to generate new ways to adapt to the times required by the translational eco-environment. The internal needs mainly refer to Pound’s imagistic poetic thought, advocation of free verse and his love of Chinese classical poetry. Secondly, in the process of translating, Pound gave full play to the central role of the translator as the translation subject, choosing effective approaches to conduct three-dimensional transformation, so as to adapt to the translational environment. In terms of linguistic dimension, by choosing words and carving sentences elaborately, and rhythm processing, Pound made the poems rigorous, clear, fresh as well as concise. In terms of cultural dimension, Pound transferred the cultural information through image creation, image juxtaposition and image deletion, meeting the principle of "Three Beauties", sound beauty, meaning beauty and form beauty. In terms of cultural dimension, by processing the names of person and place, allusions and rhythm, Pound made it easier for the target language readers to understand, and promoted the realization of communicative purposes.To conclude, the selection of poems from Fenollosa’s manuscripts is Pound’s selective adaptation to the translational eco-environment, and the three dimensional transformation in the process of translating is Pound’s adaptive selection. This understanding may be conducive to a more scientific and objective evaluation of Cathay and to a deeper insight into Pound and his translations as a whole. Besides, this thesis gives an overall description of Pound’s Cathay, thus offers a case study to testify the feasibility of the application of Eco-translatology.