Antitranslatability And Tactful Treason Of Classical Chinese Poetry--From The Perspective Of Interlingual Translation

Poetry is the superior form of literature with the characteristics of its terseness in language, indeterminism in words, abstruseness and ambiguity in meaning, sharpness in emotion, felicity in rhetorical strategy and distinctiveness in rhythm. The history of poetry in China can be dated as early as the nearly three thousand years ago.Time-consuming and difficult as translation of classic Chinese poetry is, many scholars and translators, both domestic and abroad, contribute to this hard task. The prerequisite of the translation of classic Chinese poetry is a controversial issue: translatability. In this dissertation, the author firstly makes a brief introduction to poetry and its features, and expounds the basic understanding of poetry translation, consequently, the dissertation demonstrates the hardship in reproducing the style and revealing the beauty of the original text with the purpose to indicate that antitranslatability lies in the poetry translation for restricted factors both in linguistic and cultural aspects. There are so many scholars who devote their energies to the study of the poetry translation and the study is endlessly proceeding. Afterwards, a retrospect of the studying status is quoted in relation to the argument of untranslatability and the grounds of translatability are provided. The dialectical view towards poetry translation and the relativity of translatability further confirm the idea that antitranslatability in poetry is unavoidable.The nature of poetry and the subjective criteria of its translation delimit the translators' freedom or even expel them out. The distinct difference between the languages will surely pose great difficulties, which can hardly be tackled or even cannot be solved. Language heterogeneity is centralized in the literary works, especially in poetry embodied in the aspects of phonetics, grammars and rhetorical strategies. The indeterrnined words employed in Chinese poetry and the ambiguous sentence meaning form the lacking of instancy between theauthors and the translators. It is much more antitranslatable in poetry translation when cultural divergency is concerned, since classic Chinese poetry is highly involved in allusion, culture-loaded words and both cultural and grammatical functioning puns. In-depth analysis is provided in this dissertation through some typical examples.The inevitable language and cultural differences as well as the dilemma in rendering the poetry make the tactful treason unavoidable. Translators play an extremely important role in the translation of classic Chinese poetry. They even influence the quality of their translations. In this dissertation the treason is classified into unconscious treason, considerate treason and creative treason, all of which are worthy of exploitation in developing the cross-cultural communication. Finally, creative treason in poetry translation is beneficial to the communication in terms of language's cultural function.In the closing chapter, this dissertation bears out the significance of the successive study of antitranslatability and a conclusion is drawn that linguistic antitranslatability is untranslatable and cultural antitranslatability is temporary. Then the dynamic relation between translatability and antitranslatability is demonstrated.