Dealing With The Cultural Factors In Poetry Translation

One of the main purposes of translation is to communicate culture and ideas. Translation is a cultural activity by nature. Culture can be divided into ecological aspect, material aspect, intellectual aspect, social aspect, communicative aspect, and institutional aspect which embodied by ecological cultural factors, material cultural factors, communicative cultural factors intellectual cultural factors, social cultural factors and institutional cultural factors correspondently in a certain text. The difficulty of translation rests on the conveyance the cultural contents of these factors in the SL text to the TL reader.Poetry, the quintessence of a culture, is rich in cultural specific messages which have different cultural connotation in different cultural contexts. Because of the peculiarity of poetry translation, the flavor of these cultural messages cannot be wholly conveyed to the TL reader in most cases. This paper puts forward six translation strategies of dealing with the cultural factors, namely, literal translation, free translation, transliteration, footnotes, replacement and deletion, which can help to bridge the cultural gap and realize cultural communication in poetry translation. The application of these strategies is illustrated by examples quoted from two English versions of Shi Jing which occupies an unquestionable high status in Chinese literature and culture and influences the literature and culture of China overwhelmingly. Illustrated by representative examples from Shi Jing, the study of the application of these strategies may provide salutary reference to future poetry translation and other practices of translation.This paper also illustrates the application of the six translation strategies with examples quoted from Shi Jing and summarizes the advantages, disadvantages of the strategies and the situations of application in dealing with the cultural factors of the title and content of poetry. Meanwhile, the present paper points out the correct attitude towards translation strategy is to base the selection of it on concrete conditions of the SL text, purpose of cultural communication and various readers' demands for the content of cultural information. Good translators are capable of selecting translation strategies alternately to deal with the cultural factors in poetry translation and realize cultural communication through poetry translation.