On The Relationship Between Zheng Zhenduo's Poetic Creation And His Translation Of Tagore's Poems

Zheng Zhenduo is one of the pioneering figures in the May Fourth New Culture Movement. He is not only a pre-eminent writer, artist and archaeologist, but also a renowned translator. In Zheng's writings, poems and prose hold the most influential position; in his translations, the most outstanding is the translation of Tagore's poems, which has been an unsurpassed version up to now. However, previous researches have been conducted mainly on his achievements in literary creation, especially in his novel writing. Researches concerning his translation are mainly descriptive studies on Zheng's translation thoughts appearing unsystematically in his works. Only a few specify his translation of Tagore's poems or generalize his translation achievements. Moreover, relevant studies fail to probe into the motivation of Zheng's selection of Tagore's poems as source texts and his concrete translation strategies. At the same time, existing researches are inclined to isolate Zheng's identities both as a poem writer and as a translator. Therefore, this thesis attempts to offer a comparatively systematic exploration of the relationship between Zheng's translation of Tagore's poems and his poetic creation, embracing his writing themes, writing styles, genres in writing and translation of Tagore's poems, in the hope of bringing some new hints to the research into Zheng's translation. The thesis indicates that, to a translator and writer like Zheng Zhenduo, the interaction between literary translation and creation is tremendous and can't be isolated from each other. To him, translation is not only a reproduction of the original text, but also a process of acquiring writing techniques and source materials for literary creation and a way of absorbing new spiritual nourishment. Meanwhile, translation can also be influenced by the translator's writing style, thus forming his own translation style.Zheng's translation of Tagore's poems and his poetic creation are intermingled with each other and both focus on such themes as patriotism, common people and children. On the linguistic level, Zheng's translation of Tagore's poems and his poetic creation share the same qualities such as the high frequency of reduplicated words, er, short sentences, common words, interjections, emotional particles and repetitions. Meanwhile, Zheng's translation of Tagore's poems exerts a positive impact on new genres of his poetic creation. It is just under the influence of his translation of Tagore's poems that Zheng engages himself in the creation of prose poems and petty poems.