A Comparative Study On Two English Versions Of Tao Yuanming's Poems: A Perspective Of Approach As Adaptation And Selection

With translation researches turning its attention to cultural problems, the translator's subjectivity has drawn the attention of translation scholars and thus become one of the hot issues in the translation field. But in the perspective of Approach as Adaptation and Selection, a relatively new theory raised by Professor Hu Gengshen, the translator is in the centered position and plays a leading role, i.e., translator-centeredness. Guided by this theory, through the analysis of the two translation versions of Tao Yuanming's poems, the author begins with defining the concepts of translator-centeredness, and then reveals its necessity and inevitable display.As for translating classical Chinese poetry into English, the great differences of the two languages make it a more difficult task. As a result, opinions of translators and researchers vary greatly from one to another. Any argumentation focusing on any topic has to be built on some theoretical foundation and so does the translator-centeredness. For this, Hu Gengshen's Approach to Translation as Adaptation and Selection is taken as the theoretical foundation in order to analyze the translator-centeredness thoroughly. On the basis of Mr. Hu Gengshen's approach, this thesis summarizes the main elements embodying the translator--centeredness, that is, the translator as a reader and a writer as well as his choice of translation strategy. Also there are some rules that the translators should obey in the process on the basis of the Approach as Adaptation and Selection, that is, multidimensional adaptation principles. Hu Gengshen divides them mainly into three parts: linguistic adaptation principle, cultural adaptation principle, communicative adaptation principle. Meanwhile, the translators should make his translation version strictly by the eco-environment, which refers to the worlds of the source text and the source/target languages embodying the linguistic, cultural and social aspects of translating as well as such elements as the author, the reader, and the client, in order to achieve the aim of the highest degree of holistic adaptation and selection in the translation versions.Tao Yuanming wrote 125 poems and some prose, most of which are about countries and fields. His poetry is simple, unadorned and natural. He basically gives us the picture of the village scenery and the farmer's life. He was able to write about the farmer's feeling for he has the experience of working on a farm. Tao Yuanming's poems were first translated into English at the beginning of the 20th century. The book, 170 Chinese Poems, was translated by Arthur Waley and first published in 1918. In this book it contains 12 poems written by Tao Yuanming. That is the earliest English translation version of Tao Yuanming's poems. Wang Rongpei is a representative scholar of new generation of our country. As we all know, he is of our contemporary famous linguist, lexicologist, and more importantly remarkable translator. Wang Rongpei have a perfection of Tao Yuanming's poems, and he has translated Tao Yuanming's 122 poems, in which there are 9 Chinese classical poems with lines of four characters each, and the rest are all five characters of pre-Tang poetries. So till now, there are at least seven translated versions of Tao Yuanming's poetry. In this thesis, the author will take major efforts to analyze the comparative study on Wang Rongpei's and Arthur Waley's translations. This thesis takes advantage of Hu Gengshen's theories to explore specific problems of translation by the comparison of translated versions of Tao Yuanming's poetry, in which the process of translation can be studied with the comprehensive investigation into both language-internal factors and language-external factors, which has something different from the traditional studies mainly focused on merely linguistic transference.As we all know, the translator is the most active and crucial element involved in the translation process, because he is in the position of the medium. And the translation process will turn out to be impossible without him. He has to make a full use of his translator-centeredness so as to gain comprehensive understanding of the original text and produce appropriate translating in the target language.The author will analyze two translation versions of Tao Yuanming's poems mainly in terms of the change of textual points of adaptive transformation from the linguistic dimension, adaptive transformation from the cultural dimension and adaptive transformation from the communicative dimension. The poem chosen to be discussed on the aspect of adaptive transformation from the linguistic dimension is Back to Country Life (Ⅰ), which has more than 16 kinds of translation versions of this poem in total, making it become one of the most famous poems of Tao Yuanming's. The poem chosen to be discussed on the aspect of adaptive transformation from the cultural dimension is Admonishing My Sons, in which we can see that the biggest difference lies in the translation of"行志学"which is a term easily misunderstood even by the Chinese people because of cultural points. And the poem chosen to be discussed on the aspect of adaptive transformation from the communicative dimension is Drinking Wine (the fifth). At last the author points out that the translator--centeredness can almost be seen everywhere in translated texts by analyzing the two versions of Tao Yuan Ming's poems.