| The present thesis aims at studying poem translator's re-creation from the perspective of the dialectical relationship between "blank" and "repertoire" in the original text. Both "blank" and "repertoire" are key concepts in Iser's Aesthetic Response Theory which originated in Germany in 1960s. The former denotes the indeterminacy in the literary text while the latter refers to all the familiar territories within or without the text which .set up a referential frame for readers' understanding.Literary language is connotative and complex, especially that in poems. First of all, a poem reflects a poet's personal experience in the world and it is, to some degree, deviated from the general language. Secondly, after being completed, a poem is no more than a combination of linguistic symbols on pieces of paper. It can only remain alive in readers' reading which largely depends on readers' individual explanation and which may go far beyond the poet's expectation. Thus, to identify the readers' comprehension with the intention of the poet is obviously out of the question. The original poem stands as an open framework full of "blanks", vacancies and indeterminacies instead of a fixed, static entity which allows for no alteration. The more personal and special a poem is, the more "blanks" and indeterminacies it leaves, and the more valuable it becomes in literary research.As for a translator, an open poem at the same time calls for creative work since poem translation is mainly transference of personal things. In order to make the poem acceptable for target language readers while still preserving its artistic value, poem translators have to keep a balance between two languages, two cultures and try to explore every possible way to concretize the "blanks" actively. The various concretizations exhibit not only translators' individuality but social, historical, regional characters as well. Therefore, the concretization itself is a choosing process and most important of all, a creative work.However, translators' creation is different from the poet's creation. It is the second-hand creation or re-creation based on the original text. The poem is actually endowed with a two-fold nature. Apart from being open, a poem is also somewhat determined because it is intentionally pre-arranged by the poet. During the whole composing process, the poet's every step - from choice of words to organization of sentences, from application of rhetorics to arrangement of images - unexceptionally indicates his or her intention. Besides, the poet's personal elements as well as the time and space context can not be ignored either. Both the internal and the external causes make up the "repertoire" of the original poem, which in turn limits and directs translators' re-creation.In this thesis, the author conducts a comparative study on three translated versions of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. These versions represent the lapse of time as well as the regional diversity. From the analysis of the "blanks" at different levels of the poem - for example, sentence pattern, image and style - and the deep probe into the corresponding "repertoire", the author illustrates in detail poem translators' re-creation through comparing the similarities and dissimilarities, the strengths and weaknesses of the versions.The conclusion thus drawn is: the original poem contains both "blanks" and "repertoire" which inter-depend on and interact with each other; "blank" is the premise of poem translators' re-creation while "repertoire" prescribes a limit to that creation; poem translators' activity is no more than the continuous concretization of "blanks" on the basis of "repertoire"; furthermore, although a translator can never completely get rid of personal, social, or historical influence, he or she should try as much as possible to minimize such kind of interference during the translating process so as to transfer the flavor of the original maximally.This study explores the nature and the principle of the re-creation in poem-translation from a fresh perspect...
|
PDF Full Text Request