Study On Strategies And Criterion Of Translating Reduplicated Words In Chinese Poems

This research is a comparison of 341 poems of reduplicated words (PRW) in Xi You Ji (XYJ) and its two English versions. With the aid of XYJ Chinese-English poems'parallel corpus, the study sets out to describe the use of poems in question in the one hundred chapters of XYJ. The study investigates how PRW in XYJ are dealt with in its two English translations, which is a descriptive and comparative study of two fully translated English versions instead of judging which one is good or bad, or which translation strategy should be used. Besides, the study summarizes two translators'translation strategies of PRW and draws a conclusion of the regular methods to translate them in order to reach high formal equivalence in TT. By applying"formal equivalence"as a translation criterion and strategies used by two translators, this research constructs a translation norm of reduplicated words or a new rating criterion of them.Based on the previous theoretical and comparative studies of Chinese reduplicated words, English reduplicated words and English rhetorical repetitions, this study classifies the Chinese PRW into five sub-categories, i.e., AAA type, AA type, AABB type, AAB type and ABB type. In terms of these techniques in question, there are five translation strategies used in the two English versions: (1) using complete translation model (i.e. the original English repetition model) to replace Chinese ones; (2) using synonymous or parallel phrases to translate reduplicated words of PRW in XYJ; (3) using onomatopoetic word strategy; (4) using the grammatical model strategy to translate; (5) using"no reduplicated effects"strategy. Through the quantitative comparison of the techniques in ST and two English versions, it also verifies that the poems, esp. the Chinese PRW, are not untranslatable.Through comparison and contrast of the two versions with the aid of the criterion this study proposed, it is found that two translators concentrate on different strategies respectively. Therefore, varying degrees of equivalence achieves in representing in the English versions of the poems, the rhetorical device of reduplicated words used in the source poems. On the premise of well understanding the meaning of reduplicated words in two versions, the degree of Yu's representation of each type reduplicated word is obviously higher than the degree of Jenner's. Apart from that, the degree of formal equivalence in Yu's version is approximately twice that of Jenner's.It is hoped that the comparison of the similarities and differences, and the pros and cons of the techniques in question, will give us beneficial inspirations. More importantly, the study is designed to contribute to both teaching and practice of PRW translation in general, and studies on reduplicated words translation in other genres.