On Imagery Translation In Classical Chinese Poetry From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

Classical Chinese poetry (CCP in short) gradually arrived at its most flourishing period in the Tang Dynasty which is deemed to be the golden age of CCP. Tang poetry, due to its concise language, increasingly precise meters, neatly constructed antitheses, vivid description of the natural scenery and the poets' perceptions of the world and life, is obviously preferred by the Chinese people as well as foreigners. Imagery, one of the basic components of CCP, is the main approach for a poet to present his/her intention and convey his/her strong feelings, so imagery translation in CCP is highly demanding and challenging, which remains true to a great many scholars and translators from home and abroad.This thesis intends to approach imagery translation in Li Bai's poetry from a pragmatic point of view in order to broaden the horizon of imagery translation. In the present research, Adaptation Theory (AT in short), advanced by Verschueren, is carefully chosen as the theoretical framework to examine imagery translation in Li Bai's poetry since no one has ever made an attempt to examine the translation of different types of imagery under AT, and therefore the author, based on the classification of imagery by Chen Zhie (1990), conducted such a research. Along with the case analysis of different translated versions of the images in several of Li Bai's poems, some major findings concerning imagery translation from the angle of contextual correlates of adaptability are summarized as follows:Above all, AT provides a new theoretical perspective for the research of imagery translation since AT is a pragmatic theory that studies language use, while at the same time, imagery translation is also a type of language use, embracing the original poet, the translator and the target readers.Additionally, AT, in which context is divided into communicative context and linguistic context by Verschueren, can be tightly integrated into the study on translation of different types of imagery. Among all the contextual ingredients, language users (utterer & interpreter) are underscored, and consequently when rendering imagery of nature, the original poet's (language utterer) mental state should be adapted to, so that the most adequate translation can be secured, while dealing with imagery of social life and activity, the translator, serving as language interpreter and utterer as well, should adapt his/her psychological motivation, and the target readers' (language interpreter) cognition should be placed premium on when imagery of human imagination are approached.Last but not least, regarding the methods of translating imagery of nature, imagery of social life and activity and imagery of human imagination under AT, it is preserving the original imagery based on adaptation to the mental state of the original poet, preserving the original imagery with annotation through adapting the translator's psychological motivation, and taking account of the target readers' cognition to adopt substitution respectively.Since AT is a newly-emerged pragmatic theory and imagery is the real hard nut among difficulties of poetry translation, the present study is by no means exhaustive and flawless.