Poetry Translation And Modernity

Poetry translation, as a translation activity, is an act of substitution of a text in one language for a text in another. However, it is also a task of artistic creation. The goal of poetry translation is the extension of sensuous experience of target language through drawing the heterogeneous experience of the source language. The translator is engaged in such a continuous search for poeticity contained in novel experience of source language, which infuses fresh sensibility into target language and discovers its vitality. The very spirit of the infinite search for the heterogeneous beauty coincides with the philosophy and aesthetics of modernity, which persistently pursue the otherness, novelty and the heterogeneous. In brief, it is this philosophical affinity that links poetry translation with modernity. The perspective of modernity thus may be used to examine issues in the field of poetry translation.Nevertheless, to achieve a better understanding of the problems in the field of poetry translation, one should turn to the investigation of the philosophy of language and poetics. A review of poetry translation studies indicates that the main problems and debates that arise concerning the translation of poetry are the very nature of poetry and the very nature of language. In fact, a particular philosophy of language leads to a particular poetics, which in turn predefines sets of value agreeable in the practice of translatingpoetry. The threefold interconnection indicates that the study of language and poetics is a significant dimension for research conducted in the field of poetry translation. The philosophy of language can exert influences upon poetry translation from the comprehension perspectives of the translator and reader. The attitude towards language underlying poetic assessment would greatly affect the strategies adopted by the translator in the process of translating poetry, and reader's reception of the translation as well.Therefore, from the perspective of modernity, attempts are made to investigate the philosophy of language and poetics in terms of basic assumptions of Saussurean and Jakobson's poetics, where modernity of language and poetics is disclosed. The transformations in poetry translation bear certain internal connections with transformations in the way of perceiving language and poetry. The advocacy of modernity in the field of poetry translation is the internal requirements of modern philosophy of language and modern poetics in general. In other words, the background of modernity is the intrinsic bond, which relates them with each other. What's more, it can provide a theoretical basis and justification for a variety of poetry translation methods currently in use.In the study of literary translation, many translation theorists advocate an ontological and metaphysical retrospection of translation in light of other disciplines. By doing so, it is possible to gain an insight into the regularities within the activity itself. The approach of translation studies suggested by translation theorists underlies the methodology of the present study.This thesis consists of five chapters.Chapter One serves as an introduction of the approach made in this thesis and a review of major theoretical events in the field of poetry translation abroad and at home.Chapter Two conducts a survey over the complicated history of modernity as a periodical term, and a summary of key elements of modernity is also included in the part. Necessary differentiation of two modernities is made because the focus of the thesis lies in the aesthetic modernity. In brief, the core value of modernity exists in the cult of new centered on modern concept of time, a perpetually unfinished time that marches towards the future and not towards its end; the aesthetic modernity insists on the sensuousexperience of the Subject in the present time while being constantly subjected to the pursuit of the heterogeneity that constitutes its self-criticism.In Chapter Three, modernity is employed as a perspective, from wh...