A Socio-cultural Study Of English Poetry Translation In China Around The May 4^th Movement

The translation of foreign literature has been of unusual significance and has long attracted attention of many translational and literary historians since the Chinese socio-cultural transformation and literary transmutation around the May 4^th Movement. Entitled as " A Socio-cultural Study of Poetry Translation in China around the May 4^th Movement" and based on the socio-cultural background at that period, this dissertation observes, analyses and studies the phenomenon of the Chinese translation of English poems at this special Chinese historical period around the May 4^th Movement from the perspectives of the socio-cultural psychology, the socio-cultural function, the socio-cultural translation behavior and their profound socio-cultural introspection.The dissertation consists of seven chapters.Chapter One is an introduction, presenting the dissertation's literature review and research necessity, research scope and targets, research structure and content as well as its research approaches. The chapter also depicts and explains the logical relations among the seven chapters.Chapter Two firstly explores the source of the concept of "culture" from the perspectives of philosophy, literature, anthropology and sociology, stipulating the scope and nature of the cultural concept in the dissertation according to A.L.Kroeber's definition of the cultural concept. Then the chapter divides "culture "into three bedding surfaces: material culture and institutional culture which are "outer and visible" as well as conceptual culture which is the core of culture and therefore inner and invisible, and discusses their mutual relationships, pointing out that the translation in China around the May 4^th Movement also experienced three stages: the translation of natural sciences, the translation of social sciences and the translation of culture, in accordance with China's understanding of and learning from the west The chapterStarting from the socio-cultural causes of that time, the chapter also microscopically displays the socio-cultural background, the socio-cultural trend of thought and the line of thought of English poetry translation in China in such a socio-cultural background and trend of thought. The chapter differentiates the Chinese translation of English poems in this period by delimiting them as embryonic stage, developing stage and thriving stage. After a careful study of these three stages, the chapter puts forward that " An Essay on Man" and "Ulyssess", two English poems written respectively by Alexander Pope and Tennyson, translated by Yan Fu, a well-known Chinese translator, when he translated Huxley's Ethics and Evolution, is no doubt the commencement of English poetry translation in Chinese translated literature. These two translated poems not only fills up a vacancy in Chinese translated literature at the turn of the 20^th century, but represents a turning point in Chinese translation of English poems since they were translated not by a western preacher, or a collaborator of both the west and China ,but by a purely native Chinese scholar.Chapter Three starts from the concept of cultural psychology, and it centers on the subjective culture in the receptive society and gives attention to such socio-cultural factors as socio-cultural psychology, ideology, poetics and subjectivity. It comes to the conclusion that as the carrier and product of conceptual culture around the May 4^th Movement, the different forms of English poetry translation before and after the May 4^th Movement directly attributes to the translators' historical change of their cultural psychology. Thanks to this change. the classical features of translated poems before the May 4^th Movement, the bestrangement and traditionalization coexisting in the English poetry translational (?) the May 4^th Movement, and the translational theme (?)on come into being, revealing that the language of the translated poems changes from classical (?)nese to plain classical Chinese to vernacular Chinese, accompanying translators' (?)nological change of attitudes towards the western culture from "foreign studies" to "western studies" to "new studies".Chapter Four, entitled as the socio-cultural function of English poetry translation in China around the May 4^th Movement, mainly concerns the English poetry translation's interference with and influence on the culture's circulation and dissemination, probing into the English poetry translation's influences on the subjective culture and its literary norms. Just as Hu Shi thought that the May 4^th Movement resembled the European Renaissance, we compare the May 4^th translated poetry to the Chinese Renaissance, inquiring into its influences on and constraints of early Chinese new poetry. The chapter concludes that the Chinese new poetry is a hybrid concept composed of both Chinese and western socio-cultural factors , that it both draws inspiration from the Chinese poetry revolution of the reformers in the late Qing dynasty and gains language enlightenment from the western literature, especially the British and American imagist school of poetry and America's revolution of free verse, that the trace of the Chinese new poetry "s birth, growth and evolution just follows that of the influences from the western poetry , and that the translation of the western poetry in the May 4^th period plays a crucial role in establishing the Chinese new poetry as a new literary genre in Chinese literature. In addition, the chapter gives a detailed and profound study of Hu Shi's " Over the Roofs", a famous translated poem, so as to prove it as a symbol of new era in the founding of China's new poetry.Chapter Five, based on the viewpoints of cultural sociology concerning translation studies, firstly explores the socio-cultural quality of poetry translation, arguing that the majority of English poems were translated around the May 4^th Movement for the sake of introducing new ideas rather than literature just owing to the consideration of poetry translation's socio-cultural quality, i.e. searching for new voice and new poetry from the west. At that period, the socio-cultural quality of poetry translation rises while its aesthetic quality declines, and it ultimately becomes an efficient tool of remolding our society, people, literature and language in that given social and historical conditions, an important force of propelling the society forward. Besides, the theories of cultural translation school are also applied in the chapter to the discussion of how the subjunctive culture in the receptive society affects or constrains the choice of translated texts and translation strategies around the May 4^th Movement by way of such key concepts as ideology, translator subjectivity and poetical regulations. The frequent change of the national power leads to the loose control of ideology, which creates a good condition or opportunity for the formation of the climax of the poetry translation. for the translated poetry's reception and propagation in China at that period. As the ideological influence on. the poetry translation is relative, the poetry translators can always play their subjective roles in their translation activities, in which Zhu Xiang, a renowned poetry translator at the period of the May 4^th Movement, is noted for his personalized poetry translation in the choice of either poem texts or strategic methods. The chapter also portions Andre Lefvere's concept of poetics into social poetics and personal poetics, in which although the latter is constrained by the former, yet the constraint is relative and they are sometimes identical while sometimes they are not, especially at the specified period of Chinese socio-cultural and historical transformation. The division of the poetical concept does help explain why there exist two kinds of translation strategies in China around the May 4* Movement, and fulfills the translation theory of Polysystem.Chapter Six argues that the western preachers' Euoropeanized vernacular versions of English Bible or Christian hymns played an unestimable part in late Qing dynasty's vernacular Chinese movement, the May 4^th vernacular Chinese movement and the May 4^th free verse movement by carding the diachronic change of Chinese literary language at the turn of 20^th century and looking into the relationship between the western preachers' Chinese versions of English Bible or Christian hymns and the May 4^th vernacular Chinese, especially the free new verses written in the vernacular. The chapter concludes that the activities of remolding classical Chinese by the western preachers at the end of 19^th century are one of the sources of the May 4* new literature, one of the sources of the May 4^th new poetry in particular. The chapter also proposes a concept of poetics that the form of the Chinese new poetry should be moderately fixed after displaying interdynamic and accompanying characteristics of the translated poems and early Chinese new poems, introspecting the historical contributing factors brought about by the morbid social environment in which new poems were written and by the distorted introduction of English imagist poems.Chapter Seven summarizes the main views and findings of the research, points out the limitations of the dissertation, and proposes research questions for future studies.