English Translation Of Allusions In Tang Poetry

The purpose of this thesis is to find out an appropriate translation approach to translate allusions in Tang poetry. The reasons that the author chooses this as her study object are firstly, Tang poetry stands for one of the highest literary achievements in China; and secondly, allusion, especially when used in ancient poems, is a special type in translation and poses many problems for translators. In order to make a systematic and thorough study on allusions in Tang poetry, this thesis analyzes the sources and characteristics of allusion. It then comes out with the definition of allusion as well as the conclusion that allusions are closely related to culture. Following this, for the purpose of finding out what translation approach can be suitable for allusions in Tang poems, the author reviews translation principles and approaches usually adopted in translating, namely, the principles of fidelity and equivalence, and the approaches of the target-language-oriented (TL-oriented) approach and the source-language-oriented (SL-oriented) approach. And the respective objectives of the two approaches are analyzed and compared. The author then makes respective^studies on the nature and characteristics of translation in general and allusion translation in particular. By making comparison between these two translations, especially a detailed study on allusion translation, the author draws the conclusion that in translating allusions in Tang poems, the TL-oriented approach should take precedence over the SL-oriented one. These studies are made from the perspectives of the readership, of the nature of translation in general and of the specialties of allusion translation in particular to further verify this conclusion. Following this, the thesis gives some translated versions of allusions in Tang poems and evaluates them according to certain criteria, which is put forward by the author on the basis of studying criteria for evaluation made by other translation theorists, in order to make the conclusion of this thesis more convincing.From the above analysis, this thesis comes out with the conclusion that translators should fully consider the cultural and linguistic gap between target language and source language and the acceptance of the TL readers in their translating of cultural terms like allusion, so as to make his translation acceptable and easy to spread. Finally, anexplanation to the meaning of the "TL-oriented translation approach" is added to point out that this approach is dynamic, i.e. the more similarities TL and SL share, the more literal the TL-oriented approach will be, and the closer the TL-oriented approach and the SL-oriented approach will be, vice versa. When there is no difference between TL and SL, there is no necessity for translation any more.