On The Loss Of Beauty In Form And Compensation Strategies In The English Translation Of Chinese Classical Poems

A lot of untranslatable and half-translatable elements influence the translation of Chinese classical poems, which are concise in words, intense in images, rich in meaning, harmonious in rhyme and rhythm, and free in grammar. It can result in the losses on the rhyme, form and meaning in the English translation. One of the heaviest losses lies in the loss of beauty in form, which consists of the succinct use of words and punctuation marks in the original text, the structure of some Chinese characters (such as pictographic characters) and the direct-viewing form of the whole poem, the grammar structure, and some figures of speech concerning form (such as antithesis, pun, anagram and palindrome). Rhyme, rhythm and various rhetoric methods are all included in form in a broad sense. The present thesis studies the losses on form of English translations of Chinese classical poetry from the specific aspects of form in its broad sense. Then, is there any effective way to compensate the losses in form incurred in Chinese classical poetry (CCP) translation?Scholars at home and abroad have many different opinions on the definition and methods of compensation in translation. Based on the existing definitions on compensation and her own study, the author tries to define the compensation on form in CCP. By analyzing the losses of beauty in form in different translation versions of 21 Chinese classical poems, the present research summarizes the various methods adopted by translators.These strategies include: the loss on conciseness of the structure can be compensated by keeping the number of words in each line the same as much as possible(such as in five-or seven- syllabic poetry) or by keeping the short-long pattern among different lines(such as in Ci poetry); losses on grammar structure can be compensated by complementing subject, predicate, the modifier or the complement; losses on the figures of speech concerning form such as pun can be replaced by other pun in English culture or adding annotations to a literal translation; losses on reiterative locution can be compensated by repeating other words at different places or by employing alliteration, rhyme or suffix to producing similar effects as the pun does in Chinese.