A Study On Tao Yuanming's Dissemination And Acceptance In The English World

Tao Yuanming is the first pastoral poet in China.He is called "The Ancestor of the Hermit Poets" by Zhong Rong.Tao Yuanming is known as the second great poet in China,who is only inferior to Qu Yuan.It is has been more than 100 years since Herbert.A Giles first translated Tao Yuanming into the English world.From Tao Yuanming's reception in the form of translation in the 20 th century to Tao Yuanming's reception of specialized academic research in the 21 st century.During this time,a group of Sinologists emerged.Their translations,papers and works are full of literary translation perspective and academic research perspective with western academic characteristics.With the development of cultural exchanges between countries in the world,the translation and introduction of Tao Yuanming in the English world tends to be systematic and comprehensive.This provides the necessity and possibility to explore Tao Yuanming's acceptance in the English world.Taking Tao Yuanming's overseas' s dissemination and acceptance as an exemple,this paper examines Tao Yuanming's translation,academic papers,academic works and matching poems in the English world.Firstly,at the begining of translation,I investigated two influential translators who translated Tao Yuanming into the English world.One is Herbert.A Giles,he is the first one who translated Tao Yuanming into the English world,and the other one is Arthur Waley,who contributed most in the spread of Tao Yuanming's poetries.This paper discusses the tendency of the early translation of Tao Yuanming's image from the perspective of the two translators' choice of poetries.By comparing the translated versions,this paper discusses the merits and demerits of the two translation methods of "rhyme translation" and "literal translation" in dealing with Tao Yuanming's poetries.The result is that Gile's translation theory will eventually lead to the harm of meaning in translation,while Waley's translation is more in line with the American's requirements of modern poetry.In the end,Waley not only won the battle with Giles,but also contributed to the translating principles of Tao Yuanming's poetries in the future.Secondly,it discusses the translation of the Introductive translation,which is a translation of Tao Yuanming's poems without additional notes.This kind of translation does not seek to restore the original text word by word,but gives full play to their creativity in the process of translation.Their translation is mainly aimed at ordinary readers in the English world.William Acker,T'ao the hermit-Sixty poems by T'ao Ch'ien(365-427),by William Acker,The poems of Tao Ch'ien by Lily Pao-Hu Chang Marjorie Sinclair,The Selected Poems of T 'ao ch'ien by David Hinton.Acker translated60 poems,Lily Pao-Hu Chang Marjorie Sinclair translated all of Tao Yuanming's poems,and David hunton translated 35 poems.Although the number of translated versions is different,and they are all with no annotation,what in commom is that they all set an introduction about Tao Yuanming and his poetic art before or after the text of their translated versions.It shows that there are obvious misunderstandings in the acceptance of Tao Yuanming.In the part of translation,this paper focuses on the special means in the process of translating,such as Acker's “2 + 3” model in five character poem translation,Hinton's "two sentences in one line" and Zhang Xin's "prose style" translation,as well as their treatment and misreading of Tao's allusions.Thirdly,it discusses the academic translation and compared with the introductive translation.The translators of this kind are usually sinologists with certain academic attainments.The target of their translation is academic researchers.They are not satisfied with the superficial meaning of the translation.They have done a lot of annotation and comment work,which laid the foundation for a special stage of academic acceptance.The poem of T'ao ch'ien,published in 1970 by James Robert Hightower,a famous American Sinologist in East Asia Department of Harvard University,he translated 124 poems,which basically cover all the important works of Tao Qian,T'ao Yuan Ming his works and their meaning,which was published by Albert Richard Davis of the University of Sydney in 1983.This paper not only examines the two translators' general acceptance of Tao Yuanming and his poetic art in their introductions.It also finds some creative topics in the overseas academic research of Tao Yuanming,such as the problem of Tao Yuanming's self-image building and the two translators' new interpretation of Tao Yuanming's "wine" and "Chrysanthemum".Forthly,This paper also discusses the two sinologists and translators' special questions about Tao Qian's Fu and allusions in the process of translating Tao's works.The Fu of T'ao Ch'ien by Hightower in 1954,Allusion in The Poetry of T'ao Ch'ien by Hightower in 1971 and Allusion in The Poetry of T'ao Ch'ien by Davis in1956.Hightower tried to trace the source of Tao Yuanming's Fu and divide Tao Yuanming's allusions into seven categories from the perspective of readers' difficulties in understanding the translation.Davis discussed his understanding of Tao Yuanming's Fu,and when he studies Tao Yuanming's allusions,he takes "wine" as an example and uses intertextuality to prove the thought that Tao Yuanming uses his own constructed allusion system.as well as the the image building problems in T'ao Ch'ien's “Drinking Wine”Poems and The Selfs Perfect Mirror: Poetry as AutonographyFifthly,Researching papers and works,such,Six Dynasties Poetry by Sun Kangyi in 1986;Reading Tao Yuanming:Shifting Paradigms Of Historical Reception by Wendy Swartz in 2008;a The Record of a Dusty Table:Tao Yuanming & Manuscrift Culture by Tian Xiao Fei in 2005 and The Dao and the Logos: Literary Hermeneutics,East and West.Durham:Duke University Press by Zhang Longxi in 1992,Reading,their research on Tao Yuanming's image building biographies by others and the new perspectives in Tao research in the English world,such as Tian Xiaofei's taking manuscript culture as a perspective of Tao's poetries and Robert Ashmore's paradigm of reading classics in the Six Dynasties,which has an impact on Tao Yuanming's writing and transmit to understand Tao's works.Sixthly,After analyzing the general situation of Tao Yuanming's acceptance abroad,this paper focuses on the inflences of Tao Yuanming in the English world in the 21 st century.It includes the influence of life style of Waley and Hightower.This paper focuses on the special imitation of Tao Qian's poems In the Spirit of Tao Ch'ien published in 2012.Finally,It explores the era of cultural globalization,new methods of research and interpretation of Tao Yuanming,and new ways of China's foreign translation and expansion of cultural influence.