A Study Of Feng Tang's Translation Of Stray Birds Based On Antoine Berman's Theory

Tagore,the great Indian poet,writer and philosopher,created many simple yet elegant poems with profound philosophy in his life.Stray Birds,published in 1916,is one of the earliest translations of poetry in China,which still has many loyal readers.Among the different translation versions,the one by Zheng Zhenduo is highly respected.However,in 2015,the publication of the translation of Stray Birds by the Chinese poet Feng Tang leads to heated discussions because of its freakish translation style and bold wording.From individual readers to the translation industry,many people criticized his translation while Li Yinhe,a famous sexologist and sociologist in China,openly said that this is the best translation she had ever seen.So the problem of fidelity is mentioned once again.We cannot help wondering the standard to evaluate a translation.What aspects we should put great emphasis on when carrying out translation criticism?I think this topic is worthy of studying.And it is necessary to study how to criticize this version of translation in a regular and systematic way.As we all know,in the translation practice,different translators will take different translation standards,which will inevitably lead them to take different translation strategies.Traditional translation criticism pays more attention to the discussion of translation styles and translation methods(literal translation or free translation,domestication or alienation),and does not have clear regulations of translation criticism methods and procedures.Against this background,Antoine Berman,a famous French translator,theorist,starting from his own translation criticism practice,completed his remarkable work Toward a Translation Criticism:John Donne,which takes the modern hermeneutics as its theoretical basis,with the intention to theorize the criticism of translation.In his opinion,translators play a non-negligible role in the whole section of translating,so he advocates a comprehensive examination of the translator's translation position,translation project and translation horizon,through which he can put forward an operational criticism project and establish the framework of translation criticism system.This paper focuses on Berman's theory of translation criticism,and uses this theory to analyze the translation of Stray Birds of the Chinese poet Feng Tang.This thesis takes four steps--reading and re-reading of the translation,reading of the original,in search of translator and analysis of the translation respectively--to find out the reasons behind Feng's translation.The author hopes that this study can provide a relatively new perspective to the studies of translation criticism.