Understandings Or Misunderstandings?

Famous American imagist Ezra Pound bore profound admiration for Chinese Confucian culture and translated several Confucian classic works. In this thesis, the author takes Pound's Confucian translations as case study to study his real emotion and relationship to Chinese culture by drawing upon post-colonial theory. The whole thesis is divided into five parts, namely introduction, four chapters and conclusion.After surveying Pound's translational texts by drawing upon the theory of Orientalism, the author concludes that his admiration for Chinese culture is not a mere matter. Chinese culture appears only as a tool for him to cure the illness of occidental society and get out of his spiritual crisis. Thus the Chinese culture reflected in his translation is not the real being in its own right.Owing to the deconstruction of traditional values deconstructed and disorder of the occidental society, Pound's desperately sought out order hi disorder. At the same time, the over-stable Chinese society drew his attention. In his Confucian translations, he imposed his pursuing of order regardless of the original text. As an economist, he was strongly against bankers and usurer, which was also reflected in his Confucian translations. Then the author studies on Pound's involvement with Fascism and his always changing political ideas to demonstrate their relevance to his translation. Chinese character appealed to Pound when he was disappointed with occidental languages .which also leads to his misunderstandings on Chinese characters.In the end, the author reminds us of other Orientalists who misread Chinese culture motivated by their own needs and Pound was only one case among these.