A Principle With The English Translation Of Chinese Classical Poetry

Poetry is one of the most dift1cult genres of 1iterature to be translated. Chineseclassical poetry too, with its rich poetic license, presents to translators a formidabletask when translated into English. This thesis intends to carry out a stud}' on thecauses of the difficulty in Chinese classical poetry translation. Ten classical poems areprovided together with some of their translated versions in the analyses process. Asthe result of the research, we attempt to provide a principle and some practicalstrategies for the translators.The theoretical frarnework for the research is Wilson and Sperber's relevance theory.which is basically a study on the inferential process of human communication andcognition.After a literature review in chapter one and an introduction to the relevance theory in. chapter two, we explore a paradoxical phenomenon in reading and appreciating of theclassical poetry by carrying out a qualitative study on the characteristics of the' Chinese classical poetry as well as its English translation. We conclude that theprinciple fOr the English translation is to find the best ways to preserve the English. readers' freedom of imagination while they read the translated verses. Following thisconclusion, we offer some suggestion on the strategy of poetry translation in chapterfive. ChaPter six is a verification of our suggested strateg}\ in which a comparisonchart of word symbolic values and a questiormaire are presented.Finally, in chaPter seven, we discuss some tactics with the English translation of theChinese classical poetry by aPplying the principle in some real cases. In conclusion,we call for more translators to take part in the task of introducing the Chinese. classical poetry to the English readers.