On Style Translation In Poetry From The Perspective Of Literary Stylistics

Poetry translation is generally believed to be the most demanding, and possibly the most rewarding form of translation. Transplanting the original style into the target language is really an indispensable aspect in poetry translation. While style can be studied from both a literary point and a linguistic point of view. Style is generally believed to be so vague that translators can't take control of it appropriately, so it is very important to introduce literary stylistics into poetry translation, because literary stylistics can be more specific, which is defined as a subject which, bridging linguistics and literary criticism, focuses on how the author expresses and reinforces the thematic and artistic meaning through the choice of language(Dan Shen,1995).The aim of literary stylistics is not simply to describe the formal features of literature for its own sake, but in order to reveal the stylistic effects carried by those features based on linguistic knowledge. Thus stylistic analysis from the linguistic angle can provide the translators with a less personal, less impressionistic and much more objective guiding principle.In order to combine the advantage of both literary model and linguistic model,"stylistic markers"proposed by Liu Miqing is applied in this thesis. Under this theory, not only the style expression of source language is concerned, but also the appropriateness between the source language and the target language in style corresponding is stressed.Emily Dickinson , also known as"The Belle of Amherst"is considered as one of the most original 19th century American poets. She defied the literary norms of her time, experimented with various poetic measures, and created a style of her own. Literary critics find the form and structure of her poetry innovative, her irregular use of language even dampens the ardor of general readers who are usually confused by such unconventional experiment. Lots of researches are conducted to provide an approach to interpret her mysterious poems. Models of stylistic analysis are constructed to examine Dickinson's linguistic features at phonological, graphonological, syntax, semantic and contextual levels to find out the various sources that have influenced and formed her style.Most of the studies of Dickinson's poems are conducted from the perspective of literary, while the studies of the translating of her poetry are limited. Because there is no systematic and profound study as for the translating of Emily Dickinson's poetry, based on the stylistic markers theory, this thesis aims at pushing the study further by focusing on the translating of style in the two Chinese versions of Emily Dickinson's poems: Jiang Feng's version and Sun Liang's version. In this thesis,the features of poetic language have been analyzed from aspects of phonology,lexis and syntax,which is based on the presumption that poems are made of words. From the cases analyzed in chapter four, it is concluded easily that Jiang Feng's translation is closer to the original, as for the reproducing the style of the original poems. Jiang Feng pursues the form resemblance by duplicating the stylistics markers of the original poems to the greatest degree. At the first glance of Jiang's version, the readers can identify that it is the translating of Emily Dickinson's poems easily. By the further analysis in this thesis, we are convinced that the appropriate translating of the formal markers in the original poems makes the macro-style of the translation closer to the original poems. Style is composed of two parts: macro-style and micro-style. Based on the analysis of the micro style, the foregrounded style, the macro-style is shown. The study in this thesis shows the great importance and necessity of stylistic markers theory in poetry translating and tests the usability of the theory to the studies of style reproduction, and fill in a gap in the previous studies in this field. However,this is no more than an incomplete investigation of poetic language,since the exploration of the stylistic values of English poems can be indefinite. Translators of English Poetry may further benefit from literary stylistics by investigating into other aspects of the linguistic form. The thesis does not cover every aspect of literary stylistic, neither every poem in two versions, but chooses some typical cases to call attentions of the translators and critics. Furthermore, provide some practical materials to the development of systematic stylistic translation theory in the poetry translation and push the systematic and profound study of translating of Emily Dickinson's poetry further.